


We Can Be Heroes

by boygenius2002



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Anxiety, Children's Literature References, Drama & Romance, Eventual Smut, F/M, Falling In Love, Fluff, Grief/Mourning, Gryffindor/Ravenclaw Inter-House Relationships, Hogwarts, Hurt/Comfort, Luna Lovegood is a Good Friend, Older!Luna Lovegood, Slow Burn, Underage Drinking
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-11
Updated: 2020-12-31
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:28:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 21,536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28002417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boygenius2002/pseuds/boygenius2002
Summary: Eleanor Vance has little time for nonsense- between Quidditch practice, potions class, watching out for her twin and her baby brother, and her mother's strange behavior back at home, she doesn't have much time for a love life. But George Weasley, in all of his Gryffindor heroic glory, comes barreling in anyway. Literally.
Relationships: Angelina Johnson/Fred Weasley, George Weasley/Original Female Character(s), Harry Potter/Ginny Weasley, Hermione Granger/Ron Weasley
Comments: 9
Kudos: 19





	1. Mama Said

_**First Year- September** _

“Let’s go through our checklists again before I see you off…just _one_ more time,” Emmeline Vance suggested to the two grumpy children standing in front of her while her youngest gripped her hand tightly. Audible groans rumbled through a pair of identical, crooked mouths- a boy and a girl, both sharing the very same bright blue eyes, wavy brown hair, and slightly freckled noses. _You get those freckles from your father,_ Emmeline would occasionally tell them when she was feeling nostalgic, the rare mention of their long-deceased patriarch causing a sad, empty silence to follow. Emmeline could only imagine the twinkle in her late husband’s eyes as he watched his eleven-year-old twins take off on the Hogwarts Express, how he would have marveled at floating suitcases make their way down the platform in the same way he always did whenever he saw magic.

Shaking herself from her thoughts, Emmeline looked at her children with more than a little heaviness in her heart- she’d give anything to get another few minutes of their rolling eyes and petulant whines, if only so she could keep this image of her children in her mind forever. They were leaving her today as babies in her eyes, looking no different than the painfully happy day of their birth. But in the way that only an institution like Hogwarts could, they’d be molded into full-blown adolescents with friends of their own; stories she’d only hear once they visited for the holidays, and for the first time in their tiny little lives, a more controlled sort of magic stemming from their fingertips.

“Mummy, _please,_ we’ve gone over it ten times already!”

“This’d be the eleventh. So, I’ll say it’s basically eleven times, at this point.”

“Yes, Ben, but she hasn’t actually _done_ it again, so it’s still technically ten-“

Wanting to avoid the mounting bickering match bound to occur, Emmeline silenced her twins with a halt of her hand and a severe expression that quickly forced both children to school their features. “Just _one_ more time- robes?”

“Yes.”

“Your crystal phials? Cauldrons?”

“Yes and yes.”

“And your brass scales? You packed those before you left?”

“Yes.”

“…”

“Ellie?”

“Um…yes.”

Emmeline looked at her daughter suspiciously, her eyes cut into slits as she looked at the intentionally blank expression on Eleanor’s face. “Ellie,” she said again, her voice slow and patient. “Are you absolutely _sure?”_

Eleanor’s mouth quirked seriously, the very same expression Emmeline had seen all of her children do at a number of mathematics competitions, science fairs, and piano recitals throughout their primary Muggle education. A look of deep contemplation far too old for her eleven years passed over her features, and Eleanor then gave one firm nod.

Ben huffed out another impatient sigh, his eyes wandering over to a gaggle of red-headed children (Emmeline _immediately_ knew them to be the Weasley family) make their way onto a train car. “Mummy, everybody’s boarding,” Alfie complained on his brother’s behalf, shifting his weight on his feet anxiously. “They’ve got to _goooo_!”

“Fine, fine, fine,” she replied to her youngest halfheartedly, her eyes misting with unshed tears as the train let out a warning whistle. Bending down to make better eye contact with her children, Emmeline put one hand on Ben’s shoulder and the other on Eleanor’s, doing her best to maintain a strong face as she squeezed Alfie in between them. “You _must_ look out for one another,” she told them fiercely, her voice wavering despite her efforts and her grip tight. “In all the ways Hogwarts can be amazing and wonderful and all of the good things, it can be just as lonely and terrible and bad as any place else. But you’ve got three things many other children don’t have. What are they?”

“We’ve got our heads,” Eleanor said proudly, pointing to her temple as she looked back at her mother with a crooked grin.

“We’ve got each other,” Ben continued.

“And you’ve got a Mummy who loves you very, very much. Because I love you all when I wake up in the morning, I love you all day long, and even in my dreams, I love you both the whole time,” Emmeline finished.

A quick beat of silence pulsed through the Vance family as they stood there on the platform, none of the three paying any mind to the hustle and bustle of other families hurrying their children onto the train.

Another warning whistle from the train sounded, and Ben rocked nervously on his heels. Eleanor seemed all too content to make herself right at home at the train station, looking at her littlest brother sadly as she mussed up his hair. Emmeline squeezed all of them tightly to her, not caring that her emerald green shawl was trailing all over the ground, and planted long, big kisses on two rosy cheeks. “I expect you to both be on your very best behavior,” she said seriously. “Eleanor, I’m saying that specifically to _you._ We’re going to try being nice to our peers, right?”

“…”

“ _Right,_ Ellie darling?”

“Yes, Mummy,” the little girl said mournfully. “I’ll try to be nice.”

“And let’s keep the experiments to a minimum. And that’s directed at _both of you.”_

“Yes, Mummy.”

The words were hardly a comfort for the widowed mother of two, but the train was rumbling dangerously and the long-abated reply had been a result of far too many sit-downs already. _Oh well,_ Emmeline thought to herself. _Better to have a daughter too suspicious than one too naïve._

Alfie sniffled noticeably and folded his arms across his chest. “And you’re not allowed to forget about me! Or have fun without me, not until I get there!”

Eleanor wrapped her arm around his neck jokingly, making him swat up at her as he playfully gagged. “We won’t,” she promised. “We’ll just sit for two whole years and wait for you.”

“You better.”

With one last smile, the twins departed for the train, leaving Emmeline and Alfie behind. Standing there with red tinted eyes and a suspicious sniffle, Emmeline watched them take off on the Hogwarts Express, knowing in her heart her entire nest would be empty in two years time.

“It gets easier,” Molly Weasley told her once she watched her own children board the train, placing a comforting hand on the back of the young woman’s. The red-headed mother with a brood of her own would do her best to hold back the surprise of seeing the long-dedicated member of the Order, but could barely keep a gasp from slipping from her mouth as she tried to merge the images of the Emmeline Vance she knew of- the fierce and eccentric inventor and engineer of their secret society, who smoked like a chimney and swore like a sailor - with the doting, sweet maternal image in front of her.

“Merlin, I hope so,” Emmeline replied softly.

* * *

Eleanor Vance sat next to her twin brother, Benjamin, in a red velvet booth in a too-small train car. Their hands were entwined, but if you’d asked either of them, they’d both say it was for the benefit of the other.

“One-hundred-and-twenty-seven steps,” she’d said matter-of-factly, her carry-on case between her feet as she pushed back her static-covered waves. “From Mummy to the seat. I counted.”

“I counted one-twenty-nine,” Ben replied with a scrunched nose.

“My steps are longer than yours.”

“Or maybe you cheated.”

“Maybe.”

Both siblings smirked at each other and a disgustingly warm toffee was passed from Ben’s pocket into Eleanor’s palm. In the way they did most things, a bet had been placed- and in this particular case, Ben had lost.

Eleanor smiled crookedly as the toffee melted onto her tongue, her feet swinging on either side of the dragons hide duffel underneath her. Ben’s eyes wandered to the large window to his right, flickering back and forth as he watched the greenery pass him by.

An hour of silence passed them by, both children content to share their space in a calm, disarming quiet as they got lost in their own heads.

“How much longer, d’you think?” he asked her dreamily some time later, his elbow propped up on the armrest and a crease between his eyebrows.

“Betting on it?” Eleanor quipped back.

“I’m out of toffee.”

“What a lousy excuse.”

“ _Fine_. Two hours for a punch dub, no punch backs.”

Eleanor grinned. A free opportunity to punch her brother? She’d take it.

“Two and half.”

Blue eyes met a matching pair, and in a series of confusing hand gestures sure to confuse any onlookers, Eleanor and Ben shook on it with the handshake they’d had so long they could barely remember its origin.

More time passed- so did a game of “Slide,” a long-winded strategic conversation planning in the event that one of them should get lost in the Forbidden Forest, and a staring contest that Ben won solely because he poked Eleanor right under her ribs when she’d least expected it.

But for the vast majority of their journey, the world around them was quiet and fleeting. It was the best part of being a twin, Eleanor thought- she could be alone in her thoughts without ever being truly alone at all.

Ben’s head had lolled onto her shoulder at some point in the last half hour, but as the train pulled to a standstill, he was awoken by the sound of screeching metal and the sharp inhale of his sister’s breath. They had finally arrived.

Letting out a low whistle, Ben stared up at the castle beyond the dark lake outside the window in awe. Eleanor crawled over him to gaze up over his shoulder, and she felt the slightest tremor in his upper arm as she kept herself steady with her hand.

“You’re nervous,” she said in an indecipherable tone. Ben let out a huff of a laugh and shook his head.

“No I’m not.”

“Yes you are. I can tell.”

“And how do you know?”

Eleanor smiled lightly and bumped their shoulders together as she clamored back into her seat. “Because _I’m_ nervous.”

And with that, the twins shared a strange, melancholy grin as they welcomed in their new home.

* * *

Hogwarts was much larger than Eleanor thought it would be.

Not even just larger, but just… _more._ It was warmer and more welcoming than she’d assumed, but still imposing and even a little scary in a way she hadn’t accounted for. It was complete sensory overload, from the minute they stepped out of the boats until they stepped inside huge, wooden doors.

As she stood in the Great Hall, her shoulder practically glued to Ben’s, she looked up at the velvety black ceiling covered in little glimmers of light that made everything above her look like a dark, starry night. She wondered what kind of charmwork it must have taken for the ceiling to look so much like the sky- did the professors have to recast the charms every year, or was it charmed to stay permanently like that forever? If she could fly up and touch it, would she be able to grab the little stars in between her palms?

She even distantly wondered if perhaps in her and Ben’s first year, if they’d performed very well by the end, if her Mum would charm their ceiling to look like this, too.

Everybody around her was dressed the same, in long, black robes that made them all look like one big blob if she unfocused her vision enough. There was an air of formalness around them all as a woman approached the front of the hall and plopped a tattered, patchwork-covered hat on a three-legged stool.

The strict-sounding woman Eleanor had been too distracted to learn the name of stood in front of all of the First Years, a Scottish brogue laced through her words as she droned on about things she’d have to ask Ben about later, who looked as though he was seconds from pulling out a pen and pad to write down every last word she said. His eyes were trained on the woman, his mouth set in a firm, tight line as he drank in the long, boring welcoming speech. Eleanor wished Ben was distracted too, if only so they could prattle on quietly about the people around them and so she could ask him about the charmed ceiling.

Instead, she wormed her hand out from under the billowing sleeve of her robe and made her way over to his. Her pinky finger wrapped around his pinky finger in the way they always did, and she gave it five sharp tugs. 

_“Five is good,” Ben had told her when she’d woken up from a nightmare. They couldn’t have been more than a six or seven years old, and Eleanor had been haunted by the shadow of a particularly gnarly looking branch outside their window in all of her dreams that looked far too much like a hand for comfort. Her father had offered to knock it down, but Mummy insisted that Eleanor get over it. It was just a branch, after all._

_She’d wake up from the nightmares with her chest wheezing, tears streaming down her face that she could barely feel as she tried to regain control of her shaking body. The nightmares were terrible… awful really, but the one thing that would be there no matter how late in the night she had awoken, was Ben’s comforting presence across the room in a bed parallel to hers._

_It had started as a way to calm her down, a way to keep Eleanor grounded in reality so she could understand that everyone in their home was safe and alright. Five tugs for all five of them. “Five is good,” Ben said. “Five keeps us safe.”_

_Little did both of them know, they’d dwindle down to a family of four._

_Still, old habits proved to die hard._

Eleanor let the very corner of her eye glance over at Ben’s, and she saw the barely-there curl in the corner of his mouth. Five tugs met her pinky finger back, and suddenly, she felt like things were not nearly as overwhelming as they’d been only minutes before.

“Do you think,” Ben whispered to her, his voice barely rising above a light hum, “that its possible we might not get put in the same house?”

It was a thought that had plagued her own mind for the last few weeks as the move to Hogwarts pended closer and closer, but Ben was a nervous wreck on a good day, so she kept those thoughts to herself.

“Maybe,” she whispered back. “I mean… they could also stick you in the basement with the dragons I suppose, I’d like to think that’s just as likely.”

Ben rolled his eyes, but the tension flooded from his shoulders. “Dumb,” he snorted fondly.

“What? I’ve seen steam let loose from your nose before, it’d be an easy thing to get confused about. I mean, at least you have me here- I’ll make sure they toss you the good scraps.”

“Idiot.”

“Stupid.”

Just as light-hearted as their quiet conversation had turned, Ben’s face twisted in confusion. “We never did our punch dub,” he said sadly, sounding upset that he had lost the opportunity to wail on his sister. “How long did it take?”

If Eleanor was a better person, she’d admit that Ben’s estimate of their train ride time was closer than hers, but she wasn’t. “I don’t remember,” she said with a casual shrug. “Wanna make another bet?”

“What do you wage?”

Eleanor grinned. “That we both get Ravenclaw,” she replied. “So unfortunately for me but fortunately for you, no dragon-filled basements.”

Ben tapped on his chin, deep in thought. “For a punch dub?”

“For _five_ punch dubs.”

“That’s how confident you are that we’ll both be in Ravenclaw?”

“Sure.”

“Alright,” he agreed. “I’ll bet on five.”

Both children watched as one by one, each and every First Year student in alphabetical order were called to the front of the hall and placed in one of the four respective houses. Still, Eleanor’s eyes lifted to the ceiling in wonder as her mind drowned out the sounds around her, her thoughts enraptured in the sight of the inky, black sky above her.

“Don’t be nervous,” Ben whispered to her lightly, his eyes not meeting hers. Eleanor shrugged, not looking away from the ceiling. “Why?”

He turned to her, his sunken eyes prominent from the shadows caused by the low lighting of the Great Hall. In that moment, he looked just like he did when he was a little boy- his face twisted anxiously, and his mouth had screwed up into a tight, firm line. “Everything’s gonna be alright,” he consoled, not sounding like he quite believed it himself. “No matter where you or I go.”

“Benjamin Vance,” called the grey-haired woman, her voice loud enough to bring Eleanor out of her thoughts. She turned to her brother and Ben nodded determinedly- he took a shaky inhale and squeezed her finger back five times.

Ben lead them through throngs of other First Years, his finger still wound tightly around hers as he made his way to the top of the hall. She’d be next of course, but somehow, she found herself far more nervous for Ben than she was for herself.

Taller than most boys his age, Ben sat on top of the stool without having to do much of the same shimmying motions a hundred other boys did before him. His bright, blue eyes never left hers as the professor placed the hat on top of his dark curls, and Eleanor could see him swallow nervously. It was probably imperceptible to everyone else in the room, but she could see the slightest tremor in his hands as her brother placed both of them on top of his kneecaps.

Almost comically, Ben’s eyes widened as the hat wrinkled- it’s “mouth,” which was really just a crease in the fabric, seemed to dim in thought for a few seconds before it expanded once again.

“RAVENCLAW!” the hat announced to everyone in the Great Hall, its voice old and croaking. Immediately, Ben’s face fell in relief and Eleanor jumped in glee. She clapped wildly as she watched a huge breath leave his body; he hopped off the stool and with one last hopeful glance, he parted to stage right and made his way over to the blue-clad table.

Her eyes followed him as he made his way through the crowd, and Ben was quickly welcomed with open arms by boys and girls in blue and bronze ties. _I’ll be right there,_ she thought to him, hoping she could communicate her thoughts from all the way across the room somehow. _Hold on, I’ll be right there._

As Ben’s back was clapped by a few of his new peers, his eyes wandered over to hers and she smiled at him with all her teeth. Waving at him, she clasped her hands together and tucked them under her chin, giving him an approving nod. _Proud of you,_ she thought loudly. _So, so proud of you._

But instead of warmth or reassurance, Eleanor was surprised to see that her brother’s eyes were wide with alarm. His hand motioned desperately from her to the old woman on stage, who seemed to be surveying the audience with interest as the tattered hat lay in her hands. **_Go!_** Ben mouthed at her in exasperation. **_Get up there!_**

****

“Once again, I am calling for Eleanor Vance?” the woman called out with a huff, sounding particularly frustrated by the vacancy on the stool. Immediately, Eleanor understood what all the commotion was about, and maneuvered between clusters of other children as she approached the stage in silence.

Eleanor stood confidently as she walked up to the wooden stool, and the woman’s eyes looked over at her dryly. “Thank goodness,” the woman told her. “I was starting to wonder if we’d left you back on the train.”

“Sorry,” Eleanor replied, though she wasn’t really all that sorry. She scooted onto the wooden stool and smoothed out her robes, sitting with her shoulders pushed back and her face blank of any expression just as she’d learned from years of piano lessons.

Her eyes, once again, wandered over to Ben. He nodded slowly at her, and she allowed her twin’s acknowledgement to provide her some comfort as she felt more alone than she’d ever felt before.

The woman fixed the hat on top of her unruly, wavy hair, and Eleanor took a deep breath. Think of Ravenclaw, she thought to herself. Of blue and birds and wisdom.

_Hello, Mr. Hat,_ Eleanor thought stiffly. _I would like to be sorted into Ravenclaw, please._

_Ravenclaw, you say?_ Said a rough, old voice in her ear. _Hmm… that could work, certainly…but maybe you’d like to know of your…other options?_

Eleanor’s eyes widened- she hadn’t expected to hear a reply to her request; she hadn’t expected much at all, really. _How are you speaking back to me, right now?_ She thought loudly. _Are you a person? Can you read my thoughts?_

The hat ignored her in favor of a series of more unsure rambling. _Hmm… maybe, but maybe not… it could fit, but would it, really? Perhaps Slytherin would be a good choice,_ it mumbled in her ear, sounding reluctant.

Eleanor stared over at her brother, whose face was becoming more and more twisted with confusion as minutes passed on without a decision from the Sorting Hat. Glancing over at the woman next to her, she realizes she too was looking at her curiously. She had willed Ravenclaw into her thoughts with ferocity, but now it seemed as though the Sorting Hat didn’t really think she belonged anywhere at all.

_Ravenclaw,_ she thought desperately. _You’re taking too long. Why are you taking so long? Put me in Ravenclaw?_

_A girl as wise and witty as you would do well in Ravenclaw, surely,_ the hat quipped back. _But I also see leadership and resourcefulness within you, wouldn’t you agree?_ Eleanor inhaled as she tried her best to quell her emotions, squirming in her seat as the confidence left her stiff-set shoulders.

_Ravenclaw is the only option,_ she commanded mentally, her mouth morphing into a frown.

_But aren’t you curious?_ The hat asked her shrewdly. _Your mind is quite the interesting place to be. Perhaps Ravenclaw isn’t the only option._

_Yes. It is._

_Well…if you’re sure…_

“RAVENCLAW!”

A wave of immediate relief washed over Eleanor, and she watched Ben’s face light up in excitement and happiness as he stood up out of his seat. He clapped as wildly for her as she had for him, but Eleanor couldn’t rid herself of the confusion she felt from the Sorting Hat’s indecision.

The old woman took the hat off Eleanor’s head, and with a broad smile, she scampered off the stool and walked as quickly as she could to her brother and their new housemates. Her hair flew out behind her as she made her way over to the Ravenclaw table, and as much as she appreciated the applause and friendly welcoming pats, there was really only one person she wanted to see.

Ben sat straight up as he watched his sister make her way down the table, and quickly moved over to make space on the benched seat. Matching crooked grins mirrored each other, and as Eleanor approached him, he held his hand up in the air for their secret twin handshake.

Instead, Eleanor practically rammed into his back, her hand curled up in a fist as she stood above him. Ben’s eyes snapped shut in horror and he braced himself for what was to come. “PUNCH DUB, NO PUNCH BACKS!” she yelled so loudly, the other tables couldn’t help but glance over and look at the two Vance children.

To the shock and dismay of the people around them, Eleanor wailed her tiny fist into her brother’s arm as hard as she could. Her grin was wide and the spark of delight in her eyes as she finally allowed herself to feel happy about her and her brother’s sorting made her look slightly wild. Ben shielded his face with his arms, wincing in pain as five succinct hits slammed into his arm.

With a loud exhale, Eleanor finished her punching and sat down beside him. “See?” she said smartly, flipping her hair over her shoulder. “Told you we’d be together.”

Ben wrinkled his nose at her, his hand rubbing at his sore shoulder. Despite the pained look on his face, his eyes were sincere as he glanced over at his twin. “For once…I’m glad you were right.”

* * *

Later in the evening, two red-headed twins would sit two tables away and observe their new competition with a sparkle of mischief in their eyes.

“Another set of twins,” Fred said with a grin and a tone laced with mirth. George elbowed his brother lightly in the ribs, motioning to the brother-and-sister pair quietly seated at the Ravenclaw table. Unlike the Weasley twins, their differences were obvious- but nonetheless, they had clearly attracted some attention amongst the First Years after their Sorting, and both boys could feel something competitive and effortlessly Gryffindor rise inside them. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking, Fred?”

“That we need to show all these incredibly boring people who the _better pair_ is?”

“Exactly.”

“George,” Fred replied happily. “You’ve read my mind.”

And as Fred and George Weasley sat amongst their peers and devised a plan, they looked at the poor, unsuspecting brunette siblings with a certain level of charming naughtiness.

The Vance twins would meet their match.


	2. Can't Take My Eyes Off You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eleanor makes a new friend, and she notices her and Ben are being watched- by none other than the Weasley twins.

_**First Year- Late September** _

Eleanor Vance was two weeks into her very first term of her first year, and she was confident in three things:

1\. Being away from Ben now that they weren’t sharing the same bedroom was…odd. The dormitory she shared with four other girls lacked the privacy she had certainly taken for granted back at home, and she found that she didn’t have much to say to any of her new roommates. Not much at all.

2\. There was another pair of twins among the First Years… the Weasleys in Gryffindor. Frankie and Greg, or something along those lines. They were certainly not in her house and it showed, especially since they seemed to believe their not-so-discreet stalking was completely unobvious to her and Ben.

3.Luna Lovegood was a completely and utterly insane.

During her very first night in their new dormitory, Eleanor couldn’t help but sniffle a little and allow herself to wallow in her feelings. It was an amazing day, of course, but she’d never been away from her Mum, Ben, or Alfie overnight before. Even when Dad had died, they all slept next to each other in the Muggle hospital chairs and when the doctors told them he was really gone, Mum had all three of them hop into her bed to fill the newly vacant space.

Her knees had been tucked under her chin as she clumsily moved in her nightgown in an attempt to cry more comfortably. She wondered if Ben was doing okay- he had a hard time among boys their age, his quiet and gentle nature often targeted by their peers as an effeminate trait instead of a trait of maturity. Would he feel comfortable in his new bed, among all these new people? Or was he wallowing too?

Eleanor briefly wondered if it’d be acceptable to take out her Walkman and headphones, maybe she’d listen to a few of her Dad’s tapes before she went to sleep. Instead, she found herself feeling a nagging sensation at the back of her neck like she was being watched.

Turning around, she saw a dreamy-eyed girl with long, dirty blonde hair standing right at the foot of her bed. Eleanor gave her what she hoped was a polite smile (but in all actuality, was probably more of a grimace), but the girl merely continued to stare at her as if she was some strange creature at the zoo.

_“…Hello,” Eleanor greeted uncomfortably, her eyes darting to the other three girls on the other side of the room who seemed to be watching their interaction with new interest._

_“Hello.”_

_The blonde girl’s voice was whimsical and breathy, and she took a step closer to Eleanor. She must have seen something in Eleanor’s eyes that looked like permission, because she then decided to sit on her bed, tucking her legs underneath her. Without another word, she played with a stray thread in the dark blue bedding, her head tilted to the side in curiosity._

_“Can I… help you with something?” Eleanor asked her unsurely. The blonde glanced up with the same starry-eyed expression and shrugged._

_“I’m trying to become familiar with the room,” the girl explained. “Since I can’t see in the dark.”_

_“Ah,” Eleanor replied, her mouth set in a line. She really had no clue what else there was to say as she watched the stranger feel her hands over the smooth surface of the blanket, her head cocked in study. Glancing up, she saw their roommates whispering amongst each other, snickering as they watched the blonde- was this some sort of prank? A “welcome to Ravenclaw” joke?_

_“Luna,” the girl introduced herself, her eyes still looking a million miles away. “Luna Lovegood.”_

_“Lovegood…that seems familiar, somehow.”_

_“Oh yes. Daddy’s the editor of The Quibbler…you know, the magazine? Surely you’ve heard of him.”_

_Eleanor was quite sure she’d heard her mother have more than a few choice words about The Quibbler, but she nodded anyway. “Yeah,” she said as enthusiastically as she could. “Yes, that does seem…familiar, now that you’ve mentioned it. I’m Eleanor Vance, it’s-“_

_“Oh yes,” Luna interrupted with a smile. “I think everyone knows that now. You hit your brother awfully hard.”_

_Heat rose to her cheeks, and her mouth fell open as she racked her brain in defense of her and her brother’s little game, or perhaps to give some sort of explanation. Instead, she floundered as she watched Luna’s smile widen as if they had shared some inside joke, and found herself smiling despite herself in embarrassment._

_Luna rose from Eleanor’s bed, still grinning, and gave the other girl a gentle pat on the knee. “I should say I’m sorry in advance.”_

_Eleanor’s smile wavered. “For…?”_

_“I sleepwalk,” Luna explained happily. “I’ve tried everything, and I haven’t found a way to stop myself. And you smell quite nice, I’m afraid, so I feel as though I may try to wander over into your bed.”_

_It was an incredibly odd thing for any person to say, but Eleanor found herself not all that bothered. “Well, it’s a good thing I don’t sleep very well,” she replied. “I’ll be awake, if it happens. I’ll just help you back to yours.”_

_“Oh…that’s good! That’s very good.”_

_“Yeah, I s’pose so.”_

_“Quite the pair we make, I think.”_

_Eleanor let out a dry laugh. “Yeah. Quite.”_

Now that Luna and she had developed somewhat of a…routine around each other, Eleanor found that the blonde girl acted like a First Year repellant. The Ravenclaw’s mystifying behavior and constant trance-like state seemed to push their peers into the opposite direction when they weren’t laughing under their breaths. Eleanor was an almost unreasonably logical person at the best of times, but still found Luna to be an enigma she wasn’t sure if she wanted to truly understand. Yet, there was something compelling about her and she felt drawn to the girl’s presence- it could have been pity, or curiosity, or some mixture of the two, but Luna was slowly worming her way into Eleanor’s life in a way that wasn’t entirely unwelcome.

Ben, on the other hand, was a bit of a nervous wreck around the blonde. In Eleanor’s memory, Luna was probably the only non-related female that had ever willingly spoken to him more than once of her own volition. She treated him no differently than she treated Eleanor or anyone else, but somehow Ben seemed unsettled by one Luna Lovegood.

The three of them sat at the farthest end of the Ravenclaw table, eating a hearty breakfast before their classes in the Great Hall. Ben was more than happy to grab a little of everything, his eyes widening or his mouth screwing up depending on the blends of tastes entering his mouth. Luna was either content in mixing and experimenting with different options- putting eggs and bacon into a pancake and rolling it into a makeshift burrito, or pouring a bit of her tea over some bubble and squeak “just to try it,” Eleanor did her best to focus on her own plain, boring breakfast and not recoil in disgust. If she had it her way, she’d just take a potion to get all her meals out of the way before the rest of her day started.

Spending so much time sitting around grated on her nerves, especially when she could be actually be _doing_ something.

“I believe the kitchen elves are becoming increasingly more upset with their downtrodden social status,” Luna pointed out as she stabbed at a runny egg on her plate. “Can’t you both tell?”

Ben and Eleanor exchanged quick, indecipherable glances. “Uh… what makes you say that, exactly?” Eleanor played along. Occasionally, Luna’s eccentricities could actually be quite interesting, and she found little harm in entertaining the girl’s odd theories.

Luna looked at her patiently, her eyes kind in the way a teacher might look at a small child. “Oh, Eleanor,” she sighed. “Isn’t it obvious? Look at the state of your porridge.”

Ben peered over nosily, and both siblings stared down at the creamy mush in her bowl. It looked the way it always did; just some soaked grains with apple slices. Eleanor looked back at her questioningly. “It looks awful,” Luna continued ominously. “I’ve noticed all of our breakfasts usually look delightfully put together. But yet as the days pass on, even among the easiest breakfast to make, they have started to look downright woeful. Like they’re not even trying back in the kitchens. I don’t blame them, obviously. I’d hate to be confined to a kitchen my whole life, too.”

Ben let out a chuckle. “It might not be the elves, Luna…I think it’s just Eleanor and her love for old people food. I mean, who wants to eat boring old porridge for breakfast, anyways?”

Eleanor shoved her shoulder into his side, rolling her eyes as he continued to smile to himself. “I’m sure you’re right, Luna,” she replied to her blonde friend. “If anything’s sad about my breakfast, it most _certainly_ has nothing to do with me and my taste.”

Luna looked like she was about to politely disagree with her, but suddenly her eyes widened, and Eleanor felt something hit the back of her bed. She quickly felt the back of her hair for something awful, like a spitball or something equally as disgusting like the way her peers did when she attended Muggle school, but all she felt was something light fall down her back and onto the floor.

Turning around, Eleanor scanned over the two tables behind her in search of the culprit. Almost everyone was caught up in their own breakfast conversations with their housemates, their eyes trained on the people around them instead of the sullen looking Ravenclaw.

Until she met a pair of eyes. Or rather, she met two pairs of eyes, indistinguishable from each other from a distance. The brothers were sitting closely together, thatches of fiery orange hair forming something like a two-headed monster as they watched her back.

Waiting.

Eleanor felt her own eyes narrow in irritation. Whatever happened to good old- fashioned subtlety? She could practically feel their stares burning into her and Ben, their gazes intense as they seemed to look for some sort of reaction.

Peering down at the floor, she noticed a piece of paper folded up into an airplane. Before she could think better of it, her hand snatched it up and she whipped back around to her brother and her roommate.

“What’s it say?” Ben asked her, taking a noisy sip of his tea as a stray brown curl fell onto his forehead. Eleanor looked at him with a raised eyebrow and her hands halted in their movements. “Patience, Ben.”

“Perhaps it’s a secret password,” Luna inquired, leaning closely across the table. “Maybe there’s a secret twin society here at Hogwarts, and they’re inducting you in. It’d make the most sense, I think, since there’s already at least thirty other secret organizations at this school at any given time. Daddy’s told me all about them.”

Eleanor shot her a skeptical look. “Something tells me neither of those Weasley’s would know the first thing about holding a secret. They’ve been staring at us for the better part of the last two weeks.”

“Maybe not an invitation then? I mean, what a terrible way to send a password, if they really are a part of a twin society. The paper airplane could have easily landed in someone else’s lap!”

As she unfolded the plane, staunch, inky words stood out against the pale pallor of the parchment. In a style that barely resembled chicken scratch, Eleanor read the message aloud.

**_We’ve got our eyes on you._ **

****

**_All four of them._ **

****

Ben huffed a laugh, his eyes rolling as he took another sip of his tea. “What in the world?” he asked humorously. “ _Ooooh, we’ve got our eyes on youuuu,”_ he mocked, his hands splayed out and fingers wavering ghoulishly.

Luna nor Eleanor found the note nearly as funny as Ben did. “What is this, some sort of threat?” Eleanor asked in annoyance, her nose scrunched as she tried to see if there was some sort of hidden meaning behind the words.

“You can never be too careful around redheads,” Luna told her seriously. “I hear in the Muggle world, red hair’s associated with bad luck. Is that true? Maybe the Muggles are right.”

“That stuff is all just leftover paranoia from the notoriously violent Celtic warriors, since so many of them had red hair and it all just became common association. I wouldn’t look too far into that theory.”

“The _who?”_

“Never mind,” Eleanor waved her explanation away, not wanting to bother to explain a few hundred years of British history to a girl who almost certainly wouldn’t want to hear it anyway. Her eyes scanned the words again, trying to pick up an alternative explanation or tone for the message. _We’ve got our eyes on you. All four of them._ “What should we do?”

“Nothing,” Ben said, pointing his spoon at her with a serious expression on his face. “We are just going to sit here and eat our breakfast. Or whatever you’d like to call that sad excuse of a meal on your plate. But we’ll do nothing.”

“Nothing?!” Eleanor exclaimed. “This stupid paper airplane is obviously trying to incite something.”

“Exactly.”

“So we need to respond.”

“No, we don’t.”

“ _Ben-uh_!” she whined to her twin, drawing out his name in a way she knew he hated. “We can’t just…do nothing.”

“Well, _Eleanor-uh,_ actually, we can.”

“And how do you propose we just sit around and have them stalk us?”

“Twins seem particularly violent, from my perspective. Did you know that one twin can actually _absorb the other_ in the womb?” Luna piped up. “Do you think one of you would have absorbed the other, if you could have? If so, which one of you do you think would have done the absorbing?”

“Any _way_ ,” Ben interrupted, ignoring Luna’s question pointedly as his mouth wrinkled. “They’ll get bored eventually. The best thing we can do is just wait and ignore them until they go away.”

Eleanor sighed, her face slumping in her hands. She absolutely _hated_ waiting. “Fine,” she muttered, stirring her porridge in dismay. “But for the record, Luna, yes- if I hadn’t been such a charitable infant from my very conception, one of us _would_ have been absorbed…and it wouldn’t have been me.”

Luna grinned devilishly. “No, of course not. I didn’t think _you_ would be… not for a moment.”

* * *

Eleanor found that she liked Potions. Sure, Astronomy was interesting, and Charms had its practical use- Transfiguration was a bit intimidating, and History of Magic was surprisingly the biggest bore she’d ever had to ensure. But with the same enamored state she imagined her mother was in when she was a First Year, Eleanor watched Professor Snape with complete fascination.

And perhaps the best part was, Ben liked potions too. If Eleanor said it once she’d said it a million times, but she really believed things could be much more fun when you could share it with someone else.

When she attended her Muggle primary school, they both had loved science- Ben loved working with his hands; seeing how things could be put together and pulled apart again. How something so complex could be reduced to just a few simple things, how our entire understanding of one thing could be changed by the introduction of something else.

But Eleanor loved the control of it all. She found comfort in the fact that as long as she followed the rules and did as she was told, she could achieve an expected result. She could see the fruits of her labor simply by using her own knowledge, and there was nothing, _nothing,_ she couldn’t do…as long as she did it correctly. If Potions was a game of chess, the ingredients were the pieces, and she was the master. They did what _she_ wanted them to do, and there was no greater feeling of success than a potion done right.

And maybe a bit of her love for the subject could be attributed to the fact that it reminded her of her father- of late nights spent down in the basement Mum had converted into a lab for him when the twins were five, of vials and beakers and charmed Muggle goggles. If she thought hard enough, she could still imagine the smell of sulfur lingering in his hair from his experiments they were probably far too young to be around. Sometimes, Eleanor would wake up in the middle of the night just to catch a glimpse of him in his natural state- dark circles under his eyes, hair sticking up in all directions, and the slightest glimpse of his tongue poking out between chapped lips as sparks flew from one of his latest creations.

But if you asked her, she’d deny there was any such correlation. Eleanor wasn’t emotional about those types of things, and it was useless to even think back to those times. Dad was dead, and it’d be irrational to think of him when she needed to be focused and cognizant.

So all in all, she really should have _hated_ flying. The feeling of being slightly out-of-control, of not being able to depend on one’s smarts or one’s ability if any single instance of a strong wind could take you out of your comfort zone completely.

And yet, it was the most thrilling thing she’d ever done.

“You’re actually not terrible at this,” Ben told her as they practiced mounting and lifting off. All of the First Years took Flying class together, and it was obvious that despite her inexperience, Eleanor wasn’t half bad for a beginner. Curiosity replaced wariness in her brain, even though her brother’s lack of success proved to be the complete opposite.

“You just have to sort of… _do it,”_ Eleanor tried to instruct, her hands waving in the air as she tried to find the right words to say. Ben looked at her skeptically. “Yeah, gee, thanks. That’s a really helpful tutorial- Madam Hooch better look out, you’re after her job!”

“Oh, come off it,” she barked at him. “Use your intuition. You just have to _feel_ it. “The moment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease forever to be able to do it,” remember?”

Ben dropped the broom carelessly back on the ground, his face already scrunched with disappointment and frustration after another failed attempt. “Why are you insistent I learn how to do this?” he asked her. “I’m sure I’m among a whole class of my own when it comes to wizards who don’t like flying.”

“You _will_ like it,” Eleanor replied.

“And how do you know?”

“Because I like it.”

The statement made so much sense in her head, but Ben’s look of annoyed confusion told her otherwise. “You know, just because _you_ like it, doesn’t mean I will.”

“Of course it does,” she replied with a laugh. “You just have to get the hang of it. Then we’ll be flying all around Hogwarts, just you wait.”

“But what if I don’t _want_ to do that? I’m pretty content just staying on the ground, El. You can fly around without me.”

“No,” Eleanor answered patiently. Her hand roamed over his again, giving it an encouraging tug, and she thrust the broom back into his hands. “We do this together. Like everything else.”

Another half hour went by and Ben proved no better by the end than he did in the beginning- his aggravation was obvious to anyone who looked at his furrowed brow, and Eleanor could feel it emanating from him in waves. Both siblings hated being anything less than perfect at something, and she could see that his lack of natural talent was taking a toll on his confidence.

And unfortunately, two individuals in particular felt there was no more perfect time than the present to cajole them.

“Bested by your sister, eh?” Fred said as he walked by, his face drawn in an expression of false sympathy. “Shame. George and I are both natural flyers, isn’t that right, Georgie?”

“Sure is, Fred.”

Ben and Eleanor exchanged wary glances, finding the poor attempt to rile the Vance siblings up pathetic, at best. “Yeah, woe is me, I guess,” Ben retorted sarcastically. “I prefer to be good at something that _actually_ matters, anyway.”

Eleanor realized the comment was a clever clap at the Weasley twins’ lack of talent for academics, and she ignored the slight sting of his comment. After all, she was good at it and it mattered to her. Surely it mattered to him, too?

Nevertheless, she let the slightest hint of a smirk tug at her lips as she watched both red heads glower at her brother. Twin comradery, and all that.

“You wouldn’t be saying that if you _were_ good at it, though,” Fred replied with a grin. “I mean, it’s kind of sad that you _both_ can’t do it, isn’t it? Your sister was practically ready to do laps around you, and you could barely get on the broom. If that were me, I’d be sort of embarrassed, I think. It’d be kind of- “

Ben’s smirk flickered into something suspiciously blank, and Eleanor felt her blood heat at the site of his reddened cheeks. Her hand splayed in front of her brother’s arm protectively, and she pushed him slightly behind her. “Merlin, hearing you talk is like deflating a balloon,” she quipped angrily. “Just a bunch of useless noise and hot air. Aren’t you tired, yet?”

The Weasley twins grinned widely. “Never,” they said in unison.

“We could do this all day.”

“All week.”

“C’mon Ravenclaws, I’m sure you’ve got _something_ clever to hit us back with, don’t you?”

Eleanor felt her jaw tick, and just as her mouth opened, Ben gripped her wrist back. She turned to him, and her brother shook his head. She met him with a confused expression, but he shook his head more insistently.

In begrudging acceptance of his wishes, her spine stiffened, and she gave him a short nod. “Well,” Eleanor said as she turned back to the twins. “If we’re all done here, we’ll be going.”

“Aw, c’mon. You’re not giving up, are you?” George said with a laugh. “We’re just having a bit of fun.”

“Yeah, have a laugh.”

Ben’s hand pulled on hers. _No,_ he communicated silently. _I told you, we’re not doing this with them._

With a smile Eleanor didn’t feel, she politely excused them both and the Vance twins parted ways with the Weasleys.

Later that night, when she was alone in her bed and she was staring up at the midnight blue tented cloth above her bed, she’d recall this moment and feel something prickle underneath her skin.

It felt an awful lot like her blood was simmering.

* * *

George didn’t know what it was about the Vance twins that got him and Fred in such a tizzy- but nonetheless, their appearance across a room would urge something competitive…and even a little nasty…inside them. There was something about Ben and Eleanor that incited this internal craving to _push their buttons._

Maybe it was because they looked like a couple of sullen-faced Victorian children, their dark hair and pale skin giving them a ghastly appearance. Both twins were had these big, sunken eyes, stringy figures, and something indescribably sad about them; between their pretentious demeanors and their careful politeness, it was almost like they were _begging_ to be teased.

Fred and George were a lot of things, but no one could ever say they weren’t opportunistic. They’d watch the Vance’s with heated gazes, wondering what more they’d have to do to rile them up. It seemed like no matter what they did- the obvious stalking, ominous messages, outright _mocking_ them, the fire simply wouldn’t light.

And frankly… it was starting to get a little boring.

George had made the mistake of saying this to his twin. “It’s like watching still water,” he complained to his brother, on the verge of giving up. Fred shook his head, his eyes narrowed. “Even water has to come to a boil sometime, George.”

So here they were, a few weeks into their first year, and much of their time had been spent meticulously plotting pranks and watching the interactions between the Vance twins for _any_ sign of weakness. Even the slightest sign of annoyance, or frustration, or maybe even shared humor would have been welcomed at this point.

So George watched, and he watched…and he watched. And through his watching, he became confident in three things:

1\. The Vance twins kept pretty awful company. Loony Lovegood was as crazy as it got, and she was certainly not the kind of girl one would want around if they were trying to make friends. Neither of the siblings seemed to care much about that, if their current social life (or lack thereof) had anything to say about it.

2\. The girl, Eleanor, was more outgoing than the boy. It was stiff competition, really, considering neither of them seemed all-too willing to branch out beyond their gruesome twosome and Loony, but Ben was ultimately much more reserved. Which, in Fred and George’s mind, made him the primary target.

3\. Ben and Eleanor were smart. Unfortunately.

Now, George knew he and his own twin weren’t complete idiots, which further complicated things. They could either pull off dumb pranks that certainly wouldn’t certify their status as the superior set of twins but still maintain to entertain the masses spectacularly, or they could pull off something planned and intentional and grandiose in a way that meant they’d have to continuously reassert their twin dominance by going above and beyond their last prank.

They were stuck in between a rock and a hard place, and they knew when all else failed, they could count on their mother.

Fred ultimately decided George should be the one to owl her- he’d always been just a tad bit gentler with his words, and both of them knew that if either of them could pull off nonchalant curiosity, it wasn’t Fred.

So they’d finally signed off on a letter after a few missed hits, agreeing that their inquiry should be squeezed in between other useless sentiments in the hope that it would look merely like a brief question that in no way contributed to the overall purpose of their message. No, it’d be a nice “I miss you, how is everyone at home, you’ll never guess what we did, blah, blah, blah,” with the very slightest shift in tone in the middle.

George had high-fived his twin as they watched the owl carry it off, their anticipation setting in as the bird became smaller and smaller in the sky.

Unfortunately, their mother knew them better than they’d hoped.

_My dear boys,_

_I’m so very glad to hear from you both. Your father and I cannot wait to see you during holiday so you can tell us all about the fun you’ve been having while you’ve been away at school. Not too much fun, mind you. Ron and Ginny would like me to convey to you that they miss you both very much, and they are terribly, terribly bored without your mischief around the house._

_As for the Vance children, you are not to bother them, and if I receive an owl that says you’ve done otherwise I will personally ensure that you are both brought home immediately! Emmeline Vance has done a world of good for the wizarding community and I will not have you embarrassing your father and I by antagonizing those poor, sweet souls. They have gone through unimaginable tragedy, and I will not condone any malevolent behavior, am I understood?_

_Please make sure you are eating and sleeping enough and tell Percy and Charlie to write to us soon or they WILL be receiving Howlers from your father and me._

_Love always,_

_Mum_

It was a disappointing letter to say the least- to say their mother would be angry if they disobeyed her orders was a drastic understatement, and to see that the nefarious purpose behind their owl had been discovered forced both boys to wince in embarrassment.

But yet, her words tugged them even closer to their subjects. Curiosity was ignited in both of them once again.

Unfortunately for Ben and Eleanor, once Fred and George were told explicitly told _not_ do something, their intrigue and their tendency to break the rules were practically impossible to railroad.

“We’ve got some snooping to do, I think,” George told Fred mischievously. Fred grinned and rubbed his hands together.

“Ah, yes,” he replied deviously. “Ready to get down and dirty?”

George let out a laugh. “Always.”


	3. Never Ever Getting Rid of Me

**_First Year- November_ **

_Nighttime._

_Mum was in the basement, doing her “official business” for the work that she never really got around to telling Eleanor, Ben, or Alfie much about. All they knew was that they were absolutely never allowed to interrupt, never ever, no matter what. That’s why Daddy was here, so he could watch after them while Mummy was working._

_It was also very cold. Terribly, terribly cold out. One of the coldest days of the year, according to the weather reporter on the television._

_Ben was crying close to her ear, his body shaking like a leaf as he sobbed on the floor. The excruciating whistle of a tea kettle long boiled over and Alfie’s pounding against his bedroom door had faded somewhere into the back of Eleanor’s mind, and a strange, tingly numbness filled the space inside her where she was sure heartbreak should have been._

_Ben clung to Eleanor like the only thing keeping him together was the fierce bracketing hold of his twin’s arms, and maybe it was. Alfie was starting to sniffle behind the door of the room she had locked him in, she knew he would be angry at her for keeping him away and she knew it was dark in there and that he was all alone, but she couldn’t let him see this. He needed to stay away from her and Ben as she racked her brain for some idea of what to do._

_Ben’s cries tore through his body, his head shaking back and forth as he mumbled to himself. Eleanor didn’t know if she was crying. She might have been, but it also felt like she wasn’t really herself at all, and she couldn’t tell which way was up or down._

_“G-Get Mummy,” Ben wept, his face puffy and red. “What do we do?!”_

_But Mum had said she was not to be interrupted, no matter what. If there was an emergency, she was supposed to go to her Dad. No questions asked._

_They hadn’t prepared for something like this._

_The sound of the boiling water in the kettle pouring over onto their glass hob caught Eleanor’s ear, and a strangely rational part of her brain realized she needed to turn off the stove so the house wouldn’t burn down._

_Eleanor wished she had eight arms, like an octopus. At least then, she could continue to hold her brother tight and turn off the stove and soak up the water from floor in the bathroom and hold Alfie and get Mum somehow. But she couldn’t do everything at once, and her whole body felt too sluggish and out of control to do anything at all._

_Hesitantly, she left Ben in a curled-up ball at the base of the stairs, and she made her way over to the kitchen to turn off the stove. Water from the kettle had boiled out all over the floor, and between the mess there and the mess in the bathroom, it felt like the house was starting to drown- she grabbed a towel that had been haphazardly thrown over the edge of the sink and fell to her knees, pushing the water into a puddle and dabbing at it to clean it up._

_She put the towel back over the sink, not caring that it was soaked and dripping water back on the floor, which essentially defeated the purpose of having cleaned up the mess in the first place. It had given her a temporary sense of purpose; something to do._

_She moved the kettle off the stove, and sharp pain radiated through her palm as the too-hot metal handle pressed up against her skin like a brand and burned into her. But like the noise she heard around her, the pain too faded into the background, her mind feeling suspiciously floaty and very far away._

_Eleanor went back to the base of the stairs, where Ben’s sobs had turned into quick, hyperventilating breaths as he tried to regain control of his lungs. The streams down his cheeks were still wet and flowing, and with a tug of her hand, she moved him over to their parents’ bedroom so she didn’t have to see him cry any longer. She ignored the squelch of wet carpet seeping through her wool socks- she knew she should turn off the tub faucet too, but she couldn’t find it in herself to go back in there._

_Later that night, hours after Mum had screamed after Eleanor had managed to claw her away from her work and saw the state of her husband and his big, blue eyes staring vacantly at the bathroom ceiling, she’d climbed behind her brother and wrapping an arm around his shoulders, the tears falling from his eyes puddled into the crevice of her elbow. “D-D-Daddy,” he said between wheezes, his voice sounding unimaginably pained for a nine-year old boy. “Daddy.”_

_“I’ve got you,” Eleanor mumbled into his shoulder. “I’ve got you… I’ll hold on tight, okay? For the both of us.”_

A rough shove into her back startled a yelp out of Eleanor, and her eyes widened as she took in the streams of moonlight pouring in from the window across the room.

“Who were you talking to?” said the whimsical voice she’d come to know as Luna’s. Eleanor turned over on her back, and she saw the blonde girl standing by the side of her bed and looking at her curiously.

“Huh?”

“You were talking,” Luna whispered. “In your sleep. I wanted to wake you up, just in case you were being attacked by Doxies and were in need of rescuing.”

“Wha’ time’s it?”

“Three. In the morning.”

Eleanor had no idea what a Doxy was, and she groaned as soon as she heard the time. It was far too early to make sense of Luna’s rambling. Rolling over, she wiped a hand over her face and let out a long breath. Tears had dried onto her face, leaving a sticky residue on her cheeks she quickly tried to rub away.

Luna stood patiently, not moving. “I think it was Doxies. In your dreams, I mean.”

“Great,” Eleanor replied casually.

“Because you sounded very upset. And I know if I were dreaming about being bitten by Doxy’s, I’d be upset too. They’ve arrived in my sleep before, that’s why sometimes I wake up crying. Like you.”

“Luna?”

“Yes?”

“We should go back to sleep.”

“Oh. Alright.”

Luna didn’t move, her lips quirked to the side as she continued to stare at her roommate. Eleanor opened one eye at her questioningly. “And Luna?”

“Mhmm?”

“Could you maybe…not tell Ben about the Doxies, or whatever?” she asked her quietly. “Don’t want him to get ‘em, too.”

With a light smile, Luna nodded eagerly. “Secret.”

“Yeah. Secret.”

With that, Luna moved back over to her bed and with an uncertain glance, buried herself under the covers.

Eleanor didn’t go back to sleep.

A few hours later, she made her way to the Great Hall with her shoulders slumped and her robes wrinkled. Breakfast was a silent affair- Eleanor was absolutely exhausted, and Luna seemed to interpret their secret as a complete vow of silence around Ben.

Ben stared at his sister; his eyebrows furrowed as he looked at the strain in his twin’s eyes. She took a seat across from him as per usual, Luna sitting to her left, and immediately poured herself a hot cup of tea.

“You look… not good,” Ben said dryly, his eyes narrowed in assessment. “What happened to you? You look like you’ve been hit by a bus.”

Eleanor rolled her eyes, and instead took a deep drawl from her steaming hot tea. Her tastebuds prickled from the scalding temperature, and she made no motion to fix herself any breakfast. “Thanks, Ben,” she told him sardonically. “You’re so sweet, you know that?”

“Just sayin’,” he said around a piece of toast, not caring that his mouth was full. “Morning, Luna.”

Luna merely smiled at him, tight-lipped and eye contact avoidant. Ben looked at her skeptically, her uncharacteristic silence forcing his eyes to flicker between both girls in curiosity at their strange behavior. “Okay,” he said slowly, putting his fork back on his plate cautiously. “What’s going on? What happened?”

“Nothing,” Eleanor said quickly, her eyes staring at her tea. “Just tired.”

It was a singular truth…not the whole truth, of course, but telling Ben that she had dreamed of the night of their father’s death for the millionth time was not exactly a great way to start a Tuesday morning. It’d have to do, for now.

“But why?”

“Just am.”

Ben knew his sister far better than maybe even she knew, but he chose to let it go in fear that his persistent badgering would only upset her. Instead, he let out annoyed breath- he just wanted to eat his breakfast without it turning into an awkward, silent standoff, for Pete’s sake- and drummed his fingers in a familiar piano pattern across the wooden table.

“You should eat,” he suggested offhandedly, testing the waters of her mood. Eleanor shrugged.

“Not hungry.”

“We’ve got class soon.”

With another annoyed huff, Ben threw his head back in frustration. “Okay, seriously, what gives? Why are you-?”

He was interrupted by the sudden appearance of a paper airplane skidding onto the table in front of them. None of the three children were all that surprised by the sight of the folded parchment, seeing as it was probably the twentieth airplane they’d received at breakfast since they’d started their First Year.

An increasing annoyance, at least for Eleanor. Ben had the patience of a monk- he’d take one look at the poorly built parchment plane and immediately crumble it up in his hands with a swift roll of his eyes, not bothering to look at what was written inside. But Eleanor, on the other hand, found each and every distanced exchange they’d had with the Weasley twins- however brief, since they were in different houses and more importantly, not friends- absolutely infuriating.

Perhaps what was more infuriating than anything was the relentlessness behind their actions, and the purposelessness behind it all. What might have appeared to be simple observations and unwitty quips loomed like ominous threats in her mind, and the subject matter rarely ever changed. _We’ve got our eyes on you. We’re watching you. Think you’re better than us, do you? Prove it._

It was irritating and immature and Eleanor had no idea what her or Ben had ever done to those stupid redheaded idiots to make them so _invested_ in the attempt to start some sort of twin rivalry. Typical Gryffindor extremism- the Weasley twins and their relentless strides to get attention and a few laughs from their housemates nagged at her like a fly that just wouldn’t leave her alone.

With a sigh, Ben reached over to crumble up the paper airplane, but Eleanor’s hands shot across the table first. “I want to read it,” she said sternly, her eyes meeting his in challenge. Ben moaned and shoved his face into his hands. “El, _why?_ We’ve been over this, I thought. They just want to see if they can get a rise out of us- “

“Well, they’re doing a good job-,” Eleanor interrupted, even though Ben spoke over her.

“Because you’re _letting them- “_

“It’s getting absolutely _ridiculous-_ “

“Eleanor,” Ben said sternly, yanking the paper out of her hands. “They’re just bored and trying to start something with us for fun. _C’mon._ Use your head. How many times do I have to tell you?”

Too exhausted to continue to argue, Eleanor threw the paper airplane onto the table in Ben’s direction. “Whatever,” she grumbled. Ben’s mouth quirked up, his dimples deepening in self-satisfaction as he smushed the parchment in between his hands delightedly.

Eleanor glared at the Gryffindor table, her jaw clenched furiously as Fred and George grinned at her from across the room. Their game was getting old.

A feather-light touch grazed her hand, and Eleanor was startled out of her staring competition. “The Doxies,” Luna whispered to her. “Don’t let them keep biting at you. If you ignore them, they’ll go away. Ben’s right, unfortunately.”

_He better be,_ she thought angrily.

* * *

Eleanor knew no one was perfect, but she liked to think that Ben and Alfie were, at least in the privacy of her own thoughts. 

She liked thinking of all the ways things could be improved all the ways in which something could _be._ Perfection was unattainable, but Eleanor felt that her siblings came as close as they could get to the word.

It was difficult to explain to anyone who didn’t have a brother or a sister, and it might have contributed to the distance she and Ben kept with other children their age over the years. But if there was one thing Eleanor knew for sure, it was that by some miracle act of biology, she had been given a twin and a baby brother that managed to balance her out in all the ways she desperately needed in this little life of hers.

Ben was soft in the places where Eleanor often felt she’d never be. Her words could be carelessly blunt and biting while his, even in his most sardonic state, could be laced with utmost caring and compassion. He was creative and imaginative in ways she’d never been able to push the barriers of her mind, while still being quick and sharp. Ben’s smile, however sad, was _there-_ it was cautious and maybe even a little forced, but she could always see it in the corner of his eyes a split second before the corners of his mouth tilted up. Eleanor had no problem carrying the burdensome weight of their shared anger, their frustration, their hurt…if it meant she’d get to see his happiness, even just briefly.

Even when he was annoying and apprehensive and a bit of a doormat, inside and out, Ben was beautiful.

His fingers trailed the white and black keys with a rare stoicism for an adolescent of his age, a crease in between his dark brows as he played Streliski’s “Plus Tôt” in the massive, Hogwarts music room on an old grand piano. Eleanor loved playing alongside him, when she wa. But for now, she was content to allow her mind to wander as she sat in the room’s bay window looking out onto Black Lake, the sound of warm, somber music wrapping around her like a blanket.

And as Ben sat there, his fingers playing the same chords over and over again in loops, Eleanor sat on an old, weathered green seating pillow on the window bench and watched him seek his own interpretation of perfection all on his own.

Alfie, on the other hand, had a naivety that both Ben and Eleanor lost after the passing of their father. It was as if she and Ben had silently promised to try and fill the vacancy in his life left by their father with as many good memories as they could fit after the funeral, unable to envision the same heavy sadness that had enveloped the both of them wash over him as well. He was sweet and shy and perfectly youthful despite the hardships their family had faced, and in some ways, his dreamy outlook on life had a startling similarity to Luna’s.

An idea formed in her mind as she allowed herself to be soothed by the sweet sounds of Ben’s playing, and she leaned over the bench to fetch her brown leather satchel and pulled out some parchment and one of her father’s fine pens. A lock of dark hair dropped in front of Eleanor’s face, and after blowing at it noisily, she went straight to work.

_Dear Alfie,_ she started, a small smile making its way onto her face.

_Hogwarts is, as promised, terribly, terribly boring. Ben and I have made sure to do absolutely nothing until you receive your admission letter- so please be polite and turn eleven quickly, because waiting has been awfully tiring for the both of us. We don’t go outside, we don’t talk to our housemates, and in fact, we’ve taken on a vow of silence until you step foot in the castle. All Ben and I talk about is all of the things the three of us will do once you become a student- by the time you arrive, Ben and I will be able to go to Hogsmeade, and we will make sure to go to Honeydukes and buy you all the toffees you can eat._

_Please tell Mummy we love her, and we will write to her soon. I miss you both with all my heart._

_If you’re missing me, too, set up a game of chess and play against yourself. The side that wins will be mine, of course, and it’ll almost be like I’m back home with you._

_Love,_

_Eleanor_

She tucked the parchment back into her bag, satisfied with her letter to their younger brother that she’d have to remember to bring by The Owlery.

Her eyes wandered out towards Black Lake once again, and Eleanor brought her knees underneath her chin as Ben moved onto another piece. She wondered how quickly Alfie would respond- she could imagine the excitement on his face, his slightly crooked two front teeth the only flaw in an otherwise broad, dimpled smile.

Then, something orange whizzed by the window.

Eleanor flinched, the close proximity of the flying figure to the glass causing her to scramble backwards in alarm. She quickly turned to Ben, who was staring down at the piano keys as if they’d personally wronged him. “Did you see that?!” she asked bewilderedly.

“See what?” he drawled detachedly, his index finger tapping on his chin as he lost himself in his thoughts.

“That…thing! Outside!”

It was hard to explain what _exactly_ she’d seen; it was too fast, and the bright orange color made it difficult for her to make out what it had been. She peered back out of the window, her fingers grabbing onto the sill as her eyes looked to her left and to her right.

_There._

From a distance it looked like it could have been any of the Weasley siblings, but she knew immediately from the loud cackle that she could hear through the glass that it was one of the twins. The Weasley boy was aboard a broom and being jerked into every direction, his hands attempting to reign it into control as it held onto the wood for dear life. It was like watching a rider on a bucking bull, attempting to stay mounted while the crazed animal rampaged underneath him.

Fred or George, Eleanor couldn’t be sure which twin exactly, soared through the sky while a crowd of delighted spectators watched from down below. He wasn’t flying- in fact, the strange, jerking motions of the broom couldn’t be defined as anything close to the flying she’d seen Madam Hooch do on her own broom. On the ground among the spectators was another matching redhead, and even though she couldn’t make out his features well, it was obviously neither of the older Weasley siblings. It was the other twin, and despite the blurriness of the image caused by the distance between her and him, she thought he looked a bit stricken.

Fred or George’s control of the broom was far from anything they’d been taught in their shared Flying Class…in fact, if her memory served her correctly (which it did, because _of course_ it did), the First Years were never to have a broom outside of class. He wasn’t good enough at flying, none of them were, to go off on a broom without supervision.

With dawning horror, Eleanor realized the twin aboard the broom was trailing dangerously close to the lake. The huffing and puffing of the stubborn broom shook him in every direction, and as seconds passed by, he flew further and further out over the water.

Water made her nervous.

In nearly perfect timing, the Weasley boy’s broom began to sputter and lower closer and closer to the water.

Eleanor’s eyes widened and her mouth fell open as she watched the scene in front of her unfold. She scrambled to her feet, ignoring Ben’s confused cries as she stormed out of the music room.

“Professor Flitwick?!” she screamed into the empty hallway, her robes tangling between her legs as she threw open heavy, wooden doors in search of a teacher or a Prefect. “Professor McGonogall? Professor Sprout?!” she continued to yell to no avail. Surely, there was somebody around who could help, wasn’t there?

Eleanor quickened her step, her feet pounding against the stone floors as she looked around wildly. “Help!” she tried, her voice cracking awkwardly. Merlin, the Weasley kid could be drowned, by now!

“Miss Vance?” a familiar dry, contained voice echoed. Professor Snape seemed to float down the corridor, the inky blackness of his robes surrounding flowing in a way that could only be described as ghastly. “Are you aware that the shrill, tinny sound of your voice is disrupting me and I’m sure, many others at this late hour of the day?”

“Professor Snape,” Eleanor breathed out in relief. “One…one of the Weasleys, they’re flying over Lake Black. He looks like he’s going to fall off, any minute!”

Professor Snape looked at her blankly, any expression of alarm completely devoid from his features. He didn’t look nearly scared enough for her comfort. “Is this why you’ve been screaming down the hallway like some wounded animal?”

“Yes! Professor, didn’t you hear what I said? He… he can’t control the broom, he’s going to drown!”

“Do you have reason to believe he cannot swim?” he asked her in a bored tone, sounding put out by the idea of having to step away from his work to tend to some Gryffindor First Year. Eleanor’s eyes widened comically, and she blinked at his lack of concern.

“Professor Snape,” she answered carefully, attempting to keep her tone level. “I’d rather not watch him fall into Black Lake, which would obviously answer that question… I’m a bit sensitive to water, all things considered.”

Something changed on Snape’s face, not compassion or empathy or anything quite as strong, but the slightest look of reluctant acceptance. “Fine,” he drawled angrily. “This matter better be as urgent as you claim.”

* * *

Fred was confident he had never been more peeved in his life. A mixture of embarrassment over the fact that he’d been chastised by the greasy-headed professor he disliked so much in front of a whole crowd of other First Years fused with irritation that he knew he and George would surely be receiving a Howler from their mother, and perhaps even more than anything, he was upset about the fact that he and George had managed to get seventy house points deducted from Gryffindor. Initially it had been fifty, but it ended with an additional twenty- point deduction after George opened his big, fat mouth and attempted to defend their actions to a very uncompromising Professor McGonagall.

Both boys had received a completely unnecessary talking-to from Percy, who made sure to emphasize more than a few times that their behavior was not only a poor reflection of their family, but of _him_ and his capabilities as a big brother. Fred or George didn’t particularly care one way or the other about his poncy, uptight reputation, but the tone in which he used to convey his disappointment was an all-too angering prequel to what both twins were sure was on the way for the both of them.

And perhaps, above all, the most irritating part of the entire ordeal was the fact that as they were utterly humiliated by Snape in front of their peers, and as they were forced to listen to their brother berate them, there stood Eleanor Vance in all of her stuffy, Ravenclaw glory. Her arms had been crossed as if she’d done something _good_ by ratting them out to the Potions professor, and the firm set to her mouth as her hair blew in every which way from the cold, Highland winds was identical to Percy’s own expression of dismay. And to think, Fred hadn’t even managed to pull off the greatest part of their prank- the homemade fireworks were now sitting in McGonagall’s office, far enough away from the twins to ensure they would never be used.

George was just as irate- who was _Eleanor Vance_ to ruin their fun? Hadn’t she ever heard of a joke before; was she so fun-averse that she was simply blind to the humorous antics of him and his brother? It was enough Eleanor and Ben refused to give in to the simplest of the good-natured challenges the Weasley twins had offered, undoubtedly because they saw themselves as above such “childish activity” and probably hated everything that had the potential to be enjoyable and laughter-inducing.

Conveniently, George didn’t mention how nervous he’d been as he watched Fred lose control of his broom over Lake Black. Or the fact that he was just the teensiest bit relieved that their antics had come to a halt.

Because it was convenient to blame Eleanor Vance on the sad, lackluster end of their fun. Fred didn’t need to know that George had started to second-guess their big plans, and after all, George had seen Eleanor eat _oatmeal._ What Merlin-forsaken eleven-year old, out of the eyes of parental supervision, willingly eats _oatmeal_ for breakfast?

Some sort of fun-murdering, anti-social, insane person, that’s who.

“This has gone _too far,_ now!” Fred whined, his hands clenched on the table as they sat in the Great Hall for dinner. George glumly held his face in his hands, unsure of what more could be done about their current state of punishment. They were already in massive trouble, anything that pushed the proverbial envelope over the edge would surely send them home to an already _very angry Molly Weasley._

“There’s nothing we can do, Freddie,” George sighed. “We can’t risk getting in any more trouble, at least not right now. I mean, there’s no way we can do anything without making things worse.”

“I don’t care,” Fred replied stubbornly. “If it weren’t for that… that stupid _Vance girl_ and her stupid, uppity attitude…where did she even come from, anyway?! It’s not like she was out there watching us with the other Gryffindors!”

George’s eyebrows furrowed; it was true. How had she seen them? Was she watching them, in the same way they had been watching her and her brother throughout the last few months?

“I dunno,” George answered unsurely. “Don’t know what we’ve ever done to her to make her ruin a good prank. She’s a killjoy, for sure.”

“Me neither.”

Fred leaned closely over the table, his face a smidge too close to George’s. “We’ve got to get her back for this,” he said seriously. “I mean, what better way to get a little good, old-fashioned revenge than to make _her_ the brunt of the joke?”

George sighed. “Fred,” he said in exasperation, knowing his next statement could very well instigate fight he would almost definitely lose. “Don’t you think we should lay low, at least for a little bit?”

“No!”

“Freddie-“

“No,” Fred exclaimed. “Georgie, she’s…that girl’s like _Percy._ She ruined what could have been the best prank of our First Year! Is that the kind of legacy we want to leave in our _First Year,_ mate? We’ve got to show everyone what Fred and George, what you and I, are made of! We’ve got to show those weird Vance kids, too…every prank has got to be better than the last.”

For the most part, George agreed. They had set high expectations of what they would be able to pull off since they walked into the huge, wooden doors of the Great Hall on their first day, and the only way to continue to build on their steadfast reputations as not only the superior pranksters, but the superior twins, at Hogwarts would be to continuously plan bigger and better practical jokes.

It was all in good fun, wasn’t it?

But still, somewhere deep inside him, George thought that maybe it just wasn’t the best timing to start planning another grand event so soon.

“Fine,” he said begrudgingly. “Can we at least eat dinner first? I’m starved.”

Fred looked put out by the suggestion, as if he forgot they were in the Great Hall in the first place and couldn’t be bothered to eat when his mind was racing with ideas. George, who was facing in the direction of the Ravenclaw table, made the mistake of making direct eye contact with a pair of baby blue eyes that looked slightly more disgruntled than he’d admit to his brother. Wasn’t Eleanor happy that she’d gotten in the way of their troublemaking? Since she cared enough to interrupt in the first place?

A tap on his shoulder brought him out of his thoughts.

“ _Fred and George Weasley_ ,” their dormmate, Lee Jordan, laughed as he squeezed in between them with his arms around either twin’s shoulders. “That was bloody _mental._ What were the both of you thinking? Which one of you was on that broom, anyway? We all had a right laugh before Snape ruined all the fun. _”_

Fred grinned like a maniac. “Really? You thought it was good? I mean… that’s not even our best work.”

George noticed his brother’s surprised tone slip into something intentionally casual, and he followed suit. “Yeah, not at all. We’ve got big things coming, we do.”

“ _Loads_ of big things.”

Lee laughed again, his tightly coiled twists bouncing as he rocked forward in mirth. “No doubt that you do,” he replied. “And trust me, we’re all looking forward to seeing what’s next.”

With that, Lee gave both redheaded boys a jovial slap on their shoulders and rose from the bench, wandering back to his original seat next to a girl George had trouble remembering the name of…Angela? Alexandra?

Fred’s mood seemed to lift after that; his shoulders straightened with pride as he helped himself to a large portion of mashed potatoes with a distinct mischievous gleam in his eye. “See, Georgie?” he told his twin happily. “They’re waiting for what we’ve got next. Don’t want to disappoint, do we?”

“Guess not.”

But George still had his doubts. A weird nervous flutter in the pit of his stomach formed as he thought about Fred’s possible plans- it wasn’t so much that he was afraid of getting in trouble, not quite. They’d gotten screamed at by their mother for the last eleven years, it wasn’t anything new.

He guessed, if he had to put a real reason behind his feelings, that maybe he was a bit apprehensive because Fred had a tendency not to know when to stop while he was ahead. He didn’t know how to accept success in the moment, because everything was about moving on to the next plan and the next one and the next one.

George thought that maybe he was the only thing resembling some sort of conscience between the both of them. If Fred didn’t care at all, George cared far too much- but gut feelings were for _girls_ and for babies and for stupid Percy _._ He, too, wanted to be liked and admired, and if Fred’s big ideas were the plans that would get them there, how could he argue against them?

Both boys walked out of the Great Hall, Lee Jordan bounding next to them with _Angelina,_ George learned, talking about Fred’s piss-poor flight around Hogwarts when the sight of a scrawny, wavy-haired Ravenclaw came right into their view.

Eleanor Vance was only about a few paces in front of them, seemingly unaware of their presence behind her as she stood next to her brother and Loony Lovegood. Even though he couldn’t see her face, the slight hunching of her normally poised shoulders suggested that perhaps the disgruntled expression she wore at dinner wasn’t a one-off.

“Hey, Vance!” Fred shouted, feeling emboldened by the small audience of followers they had accrued from dinner. Both Vance twins whipped around, and Luna turned a half-second later in confusion.

Ben made a motion to grip Eleanor’s wrist that she shrugged off, his eyes rolling as she stood protectively in front of her little pack. “Who’s asking?” she asked evenly, her hands posed on her hips in a way George thought was intended to be confident, but instead came across as forced and uncomfortable.

“You happy with yourself, are you? You got us in trouble with Snape _and_ McGonagall!” Fred snipped, his mouth contorting into a peeved sneer. “I mean, I don’t blame you, George and I are obviously fascinating to watch-“

“-a welcome distraction from your own boring life-” George piped up.

“-But surely you’ve got something better to do than ruin our fun?” George finished. Eleanor’s face was mustered up in confusion, her mouth slightly open as she tried to find a reply to the accusation. Ben looked perfectly impatient, his eyes wandering to the open door of the Great Hall as if he was trying to plan an escape and an aggravated huff escaping his lips.

“You’re _kidding,_ right?” Eleanor asked with an awkward laugh. “I could have very well saved your life!”

“Oh, convenient excuse,” Fred waved off. “What did you think was going to happen? You thought I was going to drown?”

Eleanor flinched, and Ben’s expression of impatience fixed itself into something indecipherable at Fred’s words. She cleared her throat and her arms folded across her chest. “What you were doing was _dangerous-_ “

“What we were doing was, frankly, none of your business,” George interrupted.

Ben, who was obviously getting bored with the back and forth, sidestepped his sister and stood in front of her. “Mate, being awful at flying is hardly anything to brag about. You’re asking her if she’s got anything better to do, but do either of _you?”_

Fred grinned, excited by the newfound presence of the usually -silent Ben Vance. “He _talks!”_ he chuckled. “Wow, thought it’d take Georgie and I ages to get a word out of you. Glad we finally proved we were good enough for you uppity folk to talk to!”

“Merlin, you’re pathetic. All this immaturity, and for what?” Ben scoffed, waving his arms around in the air as if Fred and George’s behavior was a nasty smell. “So a few people can _like_ you? You send us weird letters in the Great Hall, claiming you’ve been watching us… it seems like the only people you want to impress _is_ us _._ Maybe it’s best that El saw you make a fool of yourself. You’ve got the attention you wanted so badly, perhaps it’s about time you wrap it up.”

Fred’s face turned bright red, his freckles staunch against the pale pallor of his skin as his mouth open and closed for something witty to say. Instead, he sputtered and grasped for words as George stared at the Vance boy, slack jawed.

Luna, Ben, and Eleanor walked off- not without a fair share of sardonic scoffs left by the twins as they strutted alongside their strange, blonde friend- leaving a completely silent pair of Weasley boys in the Great Hall with even more embarrassment than they’d felt earlier in the day.

Later that night, Fred would sit on the edge of his bed in their dormitory, his eyes stormy with fury as he looked over at George. “How’re you feeling about that revenge thing, again? Still unsure?”

George shook his head. “Not at all,” he said with a smirk. “In fact, I think _I’ve_ got a plan, for once.”

Fred smiled mischievously.

If Ben Vance wanted to poke fun at Fred’s flying, George would make sure Ben wouldn’t talk about _anyone’s_ flying, ever again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey everyone! Please leave a review and let me know what you think! I know Fred and George are definitely coming across as little shits- and thats because they are! Remember, they are only eleven and I think most preteens are particularly nasty little individuals. Keep on reading and tell me your thoughts!


	4. Twist of Fate

_Dear Eleanor,_

_Your letter made me very happy and also a little sad. I am happy that you miss me too, but I am sad because you have to wait an ~~awfuly~~ awfully long time for me to come to school with you and Ben. You can have a little bit of fun until I get there if you want, I promise I will try to turn eleven as quickly as possible._

_Mummy helped me learn how to grow a flower in my hand with my magic. It was really fun, and I wish you and Ben were here to see it. When I go to Hogwarts, I will show you how to do it and you can teach me something fun, too. She says she loves you and Ben very much._

_I tried playing chess against myself and I pretended you were playing with me. I think I like playing chess with you even though you always win, because I didn’t really learn anything this time._

_I don’t like Year 5 very much. I wish you were here, or that I was over there. I hope you like my drawing of us all together at school._

_Love,_

_Alfie_

Eleanor’s finger roamed over the parchment, her mouth tilting upwards at the distorted, cartoonish family portrait on the lower half of the page. It was easy to distinguish the crooked rectangular bodies as the three of them seemingly floating in the middle of paper, Ben’s figure on the far left of the drawing standing taller than the smiling girl in the middle, followed by a much smaller boy on the right. Alfie’s boyish, sloppy penmanship struck a familiar chord in her heart, and she imagined how happy he must have been to create something with his magic, how proud Mum must have been.

Pressing the letter against her heart, Eleanor closed her eyes as she felt a stinging sensation pulse behind her lids. Hearing from Alfie made her feel a flurry of emotions she didn’t have the energy to decipher, but one stuck out to her the most.

It felt an awful lot like homesickness.

* * *

Above all things, Eleanor felt prided herself in being an extremely observant person.

It was her most reliable skill, even if there were times when she wished she could shut down her senses completely and live in a state of blissful ignorance; completely unaware of the world around her if it meant just a few moments of peace.

Being observant was useful- when she was in Muggle school and participated in math competitions, she’d stare keenly for a signature warble in her opponent’s voice, the bob of an Adam’s Apple or the nervous flicker in one’s finger. It could be fun, in a way- to notice indistinguishable things about a person that not another person in the room could identify except for her. And it made Eleanor feel like she was in on a secret. To see the catch a bare hint of a person’s nervousness before their panic set in, to watch somebody’s mind scramble as their breathing quickened and their lips press into a firm line.

But being observant could also be costly, because seeing the things a lot of people would otherwise ignore meant seeing a lot of things that hurt; like a chain of dominos, she often saw the first block fall before it hit all the others, leaving a mess in its wake.

Which is why, based on her observations, Eleanor was ninety-five percent sure (the other five percent wasn’t all that important, she decided) that Luna Lovegood was being bullied.

Bullying was a familiar concept for Eleanor, and for Ben, too. Her mother and father had placed her, Ben, and Alfie in the best Muggle education they could afford, but she reasoned now that she was in Hogwarts and saw the same, creeping patterns of mean snickers and backhanded comments once again, that perhaps children everywhere had the capability of being unfathomably cruel to one another for no reason at all.

Eleanor first noticed it was happening when Luna’s bottlecap necklace disappeared.

Luna had quirks (many, _many_ quirks), but disorganization wasn’t one of them. One of the things Eleanor decided she liked best about her was the fact that she kept her area of their dormitory neat and tidy, filled with knick-knacks and tchotchke’s Eleanor would occasionally stare at with intense curiosity before they turned in for the night. “Daddy gave this one to me after one of his trips to Eswatini,” Luna had once explained to her, pointing at a small, beautifully painted hippopotamus candle as Eleanor ran a delicate finger across the back of the handcrafted creature. “That’s a rock we found in our garden- we think it might have been the dwelling of an Acromantula, a long time ago. Can’t you tell? The markings are probably to warn predators from their treasure hoards.”

Luna had an endlessly fascinating list of possessions. Possessions she cared about deeply, despite the casual attitude she adopted as more and more of her things went missing, one by one. “Things we lose have a way of coming back to us in the end, if not always in the way we expect,” Luna told her wistfully as Eleanor rummaged under Luna’s mattress for any sign of her bottlecap necklace, or her capsule of Merpeople scales, and most recently, her green trainers.

It was nice, she supposed, that Luna was able to sweeten the sting of her lost beloved collectibles with honeyed words. But Eleanor, on the other hand, found it much more productive to investigate the suspected source of the problem than see her first (and only) friend she’d made at Hogwarts search for hours on end for items she could never find.

A decision was made, and Eleanor mentally huffed as she contemplated her plan. She could barely sleep through the night during the best of times, so it was no great sacrifice to feign sleep as she waited for something to go bump in the night. Her bed curtains were pulled to a close, but she allowed the smallest sliver of light from outside to poke through so she could maintain watch over their dormitory.

Eleanor and Luna’s roommates (who neither of them ever really spoke to)- Faith Foxglove, Eda Birch, and Drucilla Larkey- had made their disdain for both girls apparent from the very first day. Eleanor didn’t mind the cliqueyness of it all since being disliked wasn’t exactly anything new for her, but if they did happen to be involved at all with the disappearance of Luna’s things, she was sure she’d return their initial sentiment in no time at all. 

The analog clock on the wall ticked by and hours passed, and Eleanor felt her eyelids become heavy as morning approached. She secretly wished Luna would have joined her in her spying, but the blonde had the tendency to sleep like a coma patient and additionally, was about as discreet as a punch to the face. It was best that despite the entire situation revolving around Luna, she not be involved (for investigational purposes, of course).

As light started to pour into the room from early morning light, Eleanor’s mind roamed to the Weasley twins. Ben’s uncharacteristic show of bravery, his courage to stand up for her as both Fred and George accused her of destroying their poorly planned prank, had given him an air of confidence for the rest of the day as his shoulders pushed themselves back and his chin was held high in the air. She thought about both boys’ faces as they were confronted with her very nonconfrontational brother, the shock written all over the expressions as Ben stood in front of her almost like… like a big brother.

Ben may have been an hour older than her, but it had been fairly established since their birth that in every way except physical, Eleanor was the older sister. The surge of protectiveness emanating from him in that moment had made her feel safe, and as she thought back to that moment, her heart felt like it had grown tenfold and her chest felt warm. 

And maybe, just maybe, a sneaky little smile made its way onto her face as she thought about Fred and George and the way Ben had absolutely humiliated them in the Great Hall. _Maybe._

Just as she felt her eyes threaten to droop once more, a barely suppressed giggle from a few feet away caught her attention. Sucking in a quick breath as she jerked herself awake, Eleanor meticulously pushed herself up against her mattress. The old bed frames creaked noisily all the time, but she ensured that she rose as slowly as she could manage.

Sitting in a ninety-degree angle, Eleanor peered through the gap between her bed curtains. The gap was slightly too small to make out what was happening exactly, but she was sure of one thing. There were three non-Luna individuals near Luna’s bed, and she didn’t need much context otherwise.

With her tongue slightly poked out between her lips in concentration, Eleanor pushed herself onto her knees, attempting to clamor out of the bed as quietly as she could to gain some element of surprise. A vindictive part of her hoped she’d scare the piss out of all three of them; a sure warning to never come near Luna’s stuff ever again. She could only hope her plan would work as she crept closer to them, her sock-clad feet disguising the sound of her steps.

“What are you doing?” Eleanor snapped, standing in front of the girls and taking full advantage of her dormmates turned backs.

Faith and Eda jumped in their spots beside Luna’s dresser- their roaming, wandering hands snapping back towards their bodies and away from Luna’s collectibles as if they’d all been burned. And unfortunately, while Eleanor was more than happy that the element of surprise had shaken them, Drucilla had dropped what appeared to be a ceramic bell onto the stone floor.

The tinkling clang of the bell’s clapper against the ground joined the sharp sound of broken ceramic, but the silence among the girls rang the loudest. Drucilla’s face, which was normally tinged red in what looked like a perpetual sunburn, paled dramatically as Eleanor’s gaze flickered from Luna’s broken bell on the floor and back to her.

“I…” Faith whispered, her eyes shifting to her friends anxiously. “It’s not what you think.”

Eleanor’s eyebrows pinched. “What do you think I’m thinking?”

None of the girls could form much of a reply, and as seconds passed and the girls continued to flounder for an excuse, the realization of their situation began to set in. Eleanor prompted them again. “If it’s not what I’m thinking, then what _are_ you doing?”

Eda’s mouth pursed, and her nose lifted into the air prissily. “It’s none… it’s none of your business, Eleanor.”

Eleanor took a step closer to the girls, her arms flat by her sides as she continued to stare at them. “Should we wake Luna and ask her who’s business it is, then?”

Faith shook her head vehemently, a nervous smile straining at her lips. “Eleanor,” she said, attempting to sound friendly and familiar. She outstretched her hand in a passive gesture, her eyes wide with a mixture of mirth and fear. “ _C’mon.”_

“I’m waiting for one of you to tell me what you were doing, at…” she quickly looked at the clock, “…five in the morning, apparently, with Luna’s things.”

“Eleanor-“

“Did you know a lot of her things have gone missing, recently?” Eleanor pressed; her voice quiet despite her insides twisting with something akin to rage. “Would you happen to know where any of that stuff is?”

Once again, the other three girls stood in paralyzed silence. All of them waited for another of their group to speak up, racking their brains for some kind of cover story but finding none but as cold, blue eyes watched them, unmoving and wholly uncompromising.

“I’m sorry,” Drucilla whispered, her voice wavering. “I… I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to break it.” If it weren’t for the look of desperation written all over her face, Eleanor would have thought her apology insincere. Drucilla’s gaze never left Eleanor’s as she started to bend down to pick up the pieces.

Eleanor took another step forward. “Leave it,” she ordered. Her guilty roommate looked at her questioningly, obviously confused as to why her poor attempt at repairing the situation had been denied. “I don’t want you touching anything else of hers,” Eleanor explained further, her voice holding little room for argument. 

“But- “

“But nothing,” the wavy-haired brunette said with a clenched jaw. “Just leave it alone. Leave _her_ alone, you hear me?”

Eda pushed her strawberry blonde braid over her shoulder, her face mustered into a scowl that vaguely resembled the mean girls Eleanor had seen in television shows she sometimes watched with Ben and Alfie. She distantly wondered if one of Eda’s parents was a Muggle too, because it really did seem like she was copying what she’d seen straight out a movie, like one of the bullies in _Annie_ or something equally as embarrassing.

“It was just a silly prank,” Eda bit out harshly, her arms crossed over her chest. “Merlin, don’t you know how to have any fun?”

“I’ll fix the bell myself,” Eleanor replied, not bothering to answer Eda’s question. “Just stay away from her. I won’t say it again.”

Eda attempted to say something else, but Faith grabbed at her arm and shook her head, pulling them both back to their respective beds in a slow, hunched walk of shame. Drucilla, still pale-faced and frozen in place, swallowed noisily as she looked back at Eleanor. “I really am sorry,” she whispered solemnly. “Tell… tell Luna I’m really, really sorry, okay?”

Eleanor glared at her, and she bent down onto the ground to pick up the pieces of ceramic off the floor. “Luna’s not going to know anything about this,” she declared. “And I’m not doing anything for you. If you want to confess to what you did, you can tell her you’re sorry, yourself.”

Drucilla nodded slowly, and Eleanor took that as a noncommittal gesture that intended to express a silent “ _no way, but thank you for the suggestion.”_ She wandered back over to her own bed, her eyes flickering back to Eleanor as she watched jagged, ceramic pieces of the bell poke at the girl’s fingers painfully. “I’m sorry,” Drucilla repeated quietly.

“Saying you’re sorry won’t fix the thing you broke,” Eleanor said without looking up at her, her voice slow and patronizing, as if she was speaking to a child. Drucilla grimaced, and tucked herself in under her covers.

Once all three girls were back in their beds, Eleanor closed her eyes and let out an angry sigh.

She hated bullies, she decided. Eda and Drucilla and Faith could join the Weasley boys and they could all fall off the face of the Earth, if she had it her way.

The next day, when Eleanor was a bit quieter than normal, she once again blamed it on a lack of sleep. A growing excuse that was quickly losing its steam with Ben, but Luna remained as understanding as always.

And if the seemingly untouched bell sitting on top of her dresser was moved a few centimeters to the left of where it once sat, well, Luna didn’t say anything about it.

* * *

_December, First Year_

The winter holiday was fast approaching, and all of the First Years were abuzz with excitement as Hogwarts transformed into a winter wonderland. It was as if the castle had come right out of a children’s storybook, and Eleanor felt particularly tickled by the fact that Luna had taken to wearing an array of ornaments in her hair- the constant clinking and clanking of small jingle bells, which had been braided into her long, dirty-blonde locks with ribbon, bothered nearly everybody but her. It was just another one of Luna’s many eccentricities, and perhaps if Eleanor were the sort of person who cared about what her peers thought of her, she’d find it just as annoying as they did. 

Instead, she grinned wryly as she watched as Luna turned heads heading down hallways and stairwells, bouncing in her recently “rediscovered” green trainers.

Ben, Luna, and Eleanor were eating breakfast in the Great Hall before Flying Class, their moods lifted by the presence of a light blanket of snow awaiting them outside. Flying in the snow and soaring as high off the ground as Madam Hooch would allow, the chance to see the frozen perfection coated in white waiting down below… all of it sounded amazing in theory. Even Ben’s abysmal flying technique couldn’t get him down considering how fun he knew their class would be.

“I was thinking,” Ben said aloud to both girls, spooning an uncomfortable amount of sugar into his tea and causing Eleanor to grimace at the sight. “Oh Merlin,” she quipped to Luna quietly, her eyes bouncing up to meet a matching pair full of mirth. “Should we take a few steps back? I can see the steam leaving your ears as we speak.”

Confused at Eleanor’s sarcasm, Luna leaned forward and looked at either one of Ben’s ears, causing him to flush and wave her away. “I don’t see anything… steam doesn’t usually come out of _people’s_ ears…now dragon ears, on the other hand…”

“Figure of speech, Luna.”

“Oh… good! For a minute, I thought-”

“Any _way,”_ Ben interrupted with a huff. “I was thinking that maybe, I’ll actually try in Flying Class today. I know I haven’t been putting as much effort in as I should, but I figure it might actually kind of nice to see all the snow in the trees and everything, you know?”

Ben didn’t look up as he spoke, his fingers clasping the teacup just a smidge too tightly to be casual. It might have sounded nonchalant, but Eleanor knew everything he was saying was a big deal to him.

There was truly little Ben hated more than being bad at something. It was only followed by the intense hatred he felt towards being embarrassed, which generally accompanied his primary source of hate. Flying didn’t come to him as naturally as it did for Eleanor, a fact she knew caused her brother a great deal of internalized shame, but she couldn’t help but beam at him across the table as he kept his gaze intentionally off of his sister’s.

“Oh, _Ben,”_ Eleanor said happily, her hand outstretched towards his. “You’re going to _love_ it.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he replied, his blue eyes stormy with something like stubborn bravery behind them. “I just think it could be cool. Not a big deal.”

“I don’t think it’ll be cool, unfortunately,” Luna piped up sympathetically. “It seems as though it’ll be freezing cold. If you’re waiting for better weather, you might want to put your effort in when spring comes.”

Neither twin really felt like explaining the Muggle slang to Luna, knowing it could very possibly lead them in a wild circle of _more_ explanations of the culture they were raised with that seemed so very foreign to her. Instead, Ben nodded with a half-second delay, blinking in disbelief at his friend’s confusion.

“Do you think…” Eleanor hesitated, unsure if it was the best time to push her brother any further. “That maybe… if you like flying, of course…”

“-If I’ll think about Quidditch?” Ben finished for her, her thought leaving his mouth before she could continue. “We’ve got another two years before I even have to start contemplating whether or not I ever want to play with a bunch of behemoths.”

Luna glanced at him curiously. “I hope this doesn’t sound rude, but it doesn’t really seem in your nature to wait two whole years to start contemplating something. Actually, now that I think about it, it doesn’t seem in your nature to think about sports at all,” she told Ben with wide eyes. Eleanor beamed at her friend’s support, and she nodded her head eagerly. “Exactly! And Ben, if you _do_ wait two years waiting to contemplate Quidditch, you’ll spend those two years contemplating about how in two years, you’ll have to contemplate whether or not you’ll try out for the Ravenclaw team…so, all in all, seems a bit of a waste if you can hurry up and get all the thinking done _now,_ yeah?”

“Alright, alright!” Ben huffed, his nose wrinkled in distaste and his hands held up in a submissive pose. “Fine. I’ll think _about_ thinking about it, and then I’ll _actually_ think about it. But let’s get through today, agreed?”

Eleanor barely withheld an excited squeal threatening to escape her throat, but instead she tugged at his hand in a series of jerks- _one, two, three, four, five._

_Five keeps us safe._

Ben’s crooked smile lilted at his lips despite his best efforts to look upset with both girls and rolled his eyes with a long sigh. “The things I do for you,” he pouted affectionately. “I mean, honestly, do you really see _me,_ of all people, flying around and hitting people?”

“I think you can do anything you put your mind to,” Eleanor said softly, even though somewhere internally, she agreed. It was hard to imagine her artistic, introverted brother wacking at people with a Beater’s bat, but he did have another two years of growing up to do before she had to worry about things like that.

Ben laughed loudly. “I’ll take that as a no.”

Luna reclined her head in her hands, staring up at the ceiling dreamily. “Quidditch seems like a load of fun,” she said with a smile. “If it weren’t for the extreme amount of violence, really…and not to mention all those head injuries… and the disappearing players, too…”

Ben paled, and Eleanor slid closer to her friend and pressed a hand over her mouth. Luna, not at all disturbed by this, continued her rambling muffled by Eleanor’s palm. “Don’t listen to her, Benny,” his twin consoled. “Listen to me! I mean, when have I _ever_ been wrong?”

As they walked out of the Great Hall and onto the snow covered hills on the other side of the castle (not without a few snowballs being thrown, courtesy of Ben and Luna both), winter robes fastened tightly around their bodies as they took their time getting to class, Eleanor hoped she was right.

But as it turned out, while Eleanor had spent an indeterminate portion of her life being correct (she estimated around eighty percent, give or take one or two points) the “statistically insignificant” estimate that concluded that at some point she’d have to be wrong, would catch up with her at some point.

And it seemed as though a cold, wintery Flying Class was the perfect opportunity for her chances to run out.

The minute Ben, Luna, and Eleanor arrived outside to meet Madam Hooch, Ben was already beginning to cast doubt on himself. “It’s too cold out,” he said as he rubbed at his arms in an attempt to get warm, despite the warming charm he had already cast on himself. “I feel like maybe Luna was right, waiting for the spring doesn’t seem too bad.”

Eleanor clapped a hand on his shoulder and leaned closed to her brother. “Ben, you have _got_ to have some confidence in yourself,” she whispered conspiratorially. Suddenly, she snapped her fingers in an epiphany, a smile breaking out across her face as she faced him. “It’s like swimming! That’s it, that’s a perfect example. You’ve got to jump into the pool if you ever want to learn how to do it. People don’t learn how to swim simply from watching, you’ve got to do it yourself.”

Ben blinked at her. “But Eleanor,” he whispered back. “Neither of us _actually_ knows how to swim. You know that, don’t you?” 

It was true, unfortunately. But it didn’t take away from the fact that her example was relatively similar, at least in theory. “Precisely my point!” she told him exuberantly, her hand tugging on his supportively. “And we’ll never learn how to do either at this rate, if you keep dragging your feet in the mud.”

“I… I am _not!”_

“Just remember, I’ve got you. Just hold on tight, for the both of us.”

Any argument Ben had was swallowed down at his twin’s words, the sweetness in her tone doing little to disguise the weight of their meaning. Eleanor had never failed him, and she wouldn’t now.

Begrudgingly, Ben kicked one of his boots in the snow and moved his hands up to his wool hat, tugging on the ear flaps nervously. “Can we wager on it?” he asked.

“What d’you wage?”

“That I’m going to absolutely, irrevocably _hate_ flying. Ten punch dubs, no punch backs.”

Feeling confident that her brother would be wrong and that he was simply blind with pessimism and insecurity, she shook on it. “Sure,” Eleanor replied. “I’ll bet on ten.”

* * *

George was bouncing on his heels as he waited in the snow for Madam Hooch to arrive with their brooms. The too-small boots adorning his feet, a hand-me-down from Bill or Charlie, barely bothered him in the way they typically would have as he tried to wipe the wild grin from his face.

After a long night of planning, George was quite confident that their prank for today was going to go off without a hitch. They had picked their target (Ben Vance, obviously), their instruments of destruction, and of course, an explanation they’d inevitably have to give when it was all over.

Fred and George’s combined excitement mixed between them into an atmosphere of devious jumpiness, neither boy looking very innocent even from a bystander’s eyes.

They watched the Vance twins and Loony Lovegood arrive, their cheeks all reddened from the cold and based on a few clumps of snow still caught in the fluffy, white pom-pom sitting on top of her tuque, the three of them clearly had some fun before class. _Hope you’ve all had a good laugh,_ George thought to himself, rubbing his hands together in what he hoped look like an attempt to warm himself but in reality was self-satisfaction about the next chain of events he was about to set off. _You’ll be crying soon enough._

George had never felt so accomplished, and their prank hadn’t even _happened_ yet.

Luckily, Ben had decided to wear an absolutely atrocious winter hat to class, which just served as another necessary and helpful component for their master plan. The dark-haired boy shifted his feet nervously as Madam Hooch passed brooms out to all the First Years, his slightly upturned nose scrunched in anxiety.

“Ready, George?” Fred said as he bumped his twin in the shoulder, his eyebrows shot up high on his forehead.

“Ready as ever, Freddie,” George told him proudly. This prank, a genius plan if there had ever been one, would definitely knock the Vance twins down a few steps. While George didn’t pride himself in being an observant person, he was smart, smarter than his family cared to give him credit for, and he was tactical.

Ben, wobbly and unsure as always, mounted the Shooting Star with all the physical skill of a three-legged crup. Both siblings were standing just a bit too far for him to overhear their conversation, but based on Eleanor’s eager head nodding, it was obvious she was trying to encourage him and show him the proper way of getting on the broom. George watched Ben try to imitate his sister’s hand positioning, his feet shifting again as he attempted to get comfortable.

And much to George’s confusion, as he watched Ben and Eleanor gear up for flight, he felt his own neck prickle with the sense that he too was being stared at.

Next to the twins stood Luna, who’s eyes met his without a moment of hesitation. Her pale blue eyes stared into George’s green ones; her eyebrows pinched in an uncharacteristic amount of thought as she watched him watch the Vance’s.

George swallowed, and he shot her a quick smile. He’d been caught.

Luna didn’t smile back. Her head, ever so slightly, tilted to the side in curiosity.

“We need to get this show on the road,” George whispered fiercely to Fred. “Luna’s watching us, I think.”

He didn’t think. He _knew._ He’d watched her watch him, after all.

Fred rolled his eyes and jostled his brother’s shoulder. “Forget about her,” he replied casually, his hand waving flippantly. “She’s probably staring into the void, or something. She’s absolutely bonkers, you know. I overheard some of the Ravenclaw girls talking about it the other day. Edith, or Eda, or whatever her name is… she said Luna’s a “lights turned on, but nobody’s home,” kind of person, y’know?”

“Yeah,” George answered with a nod. The blonde girl was definitely odd.

Their prank was based on a couple of preexisting conditions- one of them being Fred and his superb flying skills, and the other being Ben’s complete lack of them. Not even a strange stare from Luna was going to dissuade him.

Mounting his Shooting Star and half-listening to Madam Hooch’s directions, George flew up a few feet into the air and turned the direction of his broom to his right. All the First Years had assembled a semi-organized line in the air, and George moved a few inches to his right every few moments behind the line as he got closer and closer to Ben.

Fred, in perfect timing, flew back down to the ground and started shaking at his broom in faux- frustration. “Madam Hooch!” he called out, winking up at his twin. “Madam _Hoooooch!”_

Their flying instructor, looking for all the world as if she was being called down from the air by a Howler instead of a student, made a big show of sailing on back to the ground and dismounting. “What is it, Weasley?!” she snapped. “I’m well-aware you know quite a bit about brooms, if your last stint in Professor Dumbledore’s office was any clue!”

Fred smiled sheepishly, shrugging his shoulders as he looked at her innocently. “I dunno, Misses,” he said, sounding pleased with himself. “My broom’s just not working!”

“ _What’s_ not working, exactly?”

“Misses, isn’t that what you’re supposed to tell _me?_ I’m just a First Year, after all!”

George smirked, Fred was certainly laying it on thick and Madam Hooch looked incredibly suspicious, but she was on the ground. Exactly where George needed her, far away and out of the sky.

He continued to creep closer and closer to Ben, who was wavering dangerously on the Shooting Star as Eleanor tried her best to calm his climbing nerves. Luna, much to George’s relief, was too distracted by her left-veering broom to watch as he slowly made his way over to the twins.

Sneaking up right behind Ben, George leaned over his broom and with a quick snatch of his hand, he grabbed the Ravenclaw’s atrocious wool hat right off his head.

If Ben was troubled before, he was definitely distressed now. “Hey!” he exclaimed, his hands gripping the broom too tightly to grasp at his now missing hat. “Give that back!”

“Aw, c’mon Vance, if you want it back… you have to come get it!”

Eleanor’s eyes widened as George sailed higher into the air, but she didn’t move from her position in the air. Ben growled out a frustrated sound, his mouth twisted into a frown. “No! Give my hat back, now!”

Teasingly, George sailed right over Ben’s head, his hat dangling from his hand just slightly out of Ben’s reach. Other students were turning their heads, and chuckles started to reverb through their peers. Madam Hooch looked up at them skeptically, but Fred whined loudly once again. “Madam Hooch, _help me_ , for Merlin’s sake!”

“Watch your language, Mr. Weasley, or I will personally start taking points away from Gryffindor like they’re free samples!” Hooch replied, assessing Fred’s broom with concentration. “I don’t understand what the problem is, your broom is just fine!”

“Misses, it’s really not! It’s all wonky and wobbly and I just can’t…“

George tuned out of Fred’s conversation with their instructor and refocused on his efforts to prank Ben. For a boy who was quick to call out Fred’s awful flying, George _knew_ Vance would completely embarrass himself as George flew a few mere inches above him, too paralyzed with his own fear to make any further moves.

Maybe he’d gift Ben’s hat to Percy or something this Christmas- it was ugly and stuffy looking, so surely his older brother would appreciate it.

“Ben! C’mon, mate, can’t you fly a little higher? I mean, I’m right here! Just _grab_ it from me!”

Eleanor glared up at him, speaking softly to her brother as she fixed her stare on the redheaded boy above them.

Something she said must have set Ben off, because he immediately jerked away from her. In a move that both startled and impressed George, Ben shakily lifted his broom closer to his chest in order for it to fly up.

“Ben!” Eleanor gritted out tensely. “Ben, _don’t.”_

“No, El,” Ben spat. “I told you, I was gonna start trying to actually fly this stupid thing!”

“Ben, this isn’t a game! Quit it!” 

The dark-haired boy ignored his sister, his blue eyes focused on a chuckling George Weasley as he nervously lifted one of his hands from the broom. In pretend sympathy, George held the hat out to him, but was once again purposefully just out of reach. “Ben, just take it, already! Goodness, you’re really high up from the ground, aren’t you?”

The words caused the Ravenclaw’s face to pale, but his hand continued to reach out towards his hat in quick, grabbing motions. His cheeks were flushed from his efforts, his jaw clenched in anger as he continued to try to make a grab for his winter hat.

“Wow, mate, you’re _really_ shaky on that broom! Best be careful, I mean… you’re not a very good flier, after all!”

“Shut it!” Ben spat, leaning dangerously over in George’s direction. “Give me my stupid hat back!”

“Nah, I don’t think so!” George laughed, flying up once more. From his height in the sky, several feet higher than all of the other First Years, he could tell Madam Hooch had caught onto their antics. But she was still on the ground and dismounted from her broom, so there was little she could do except yell angry commands neither of them could hear.

In a crazed, clumsy attempt to catch George by surprise, Ben threw himself forward and made a dash for his hat. Teasingly, George leaned away with his broom, which left Ben nothing to grasp at but air.

Both boys had drastically miscalculated. George hadn’t expected Ben to lurch so far forward in his direction, and Ben definitely hadn’t meant to lose his balance completely. The redhead watched as a pair of blue eyes blew open in terror, and in what felt like slow motion, Ben fell from his broom.

Eleanor’s horrified scream rang through the sky as her brother hurtled towards the ground, and Madam Hooch was a moment too slow to reach for her wand. Ben, falling back-first into the snow-covered grass, made an audible cry as his body hit the surface below him. Even from George’s angle, he could see the same terrified blue eyes glaze over with pain.

The entire class went completely silent, and George immediately flew to the ground. He jumped off his broom and ran over to the boy, who’s arm lay in an unnaturally crooked angle. Ben was gasping for air as if the air had been knocked out of him, and his face was submerged in snow as he curled into himself. He couldn’t even cry, too desperate to breathe- but tears streaked down his rosy red cheeks as he writhed on the ground.

“Bloody Hell,” George whimpered shakily, his hands pulling at orange strands of hair as he looked down at Ben. He… he thought he’d just embarrass him, that he’d show the whole class how awful of a flier he was… he just wanted him to be humiliated, that’s all! A little ego check, he hadn’t meant… he hadn’t meant to _hurt him_.

For all of George’s faults (many, _many_ faults), he wasn’t… he wasn’t _violent._ He’d never hurt a person in his life, never mind do something like _this._ He didn’t want Ben to fall, he just meant to-

All of the First Years were back on the ground, likely an order from Madam Hooch that George couldn’t hear as blood pounded in his ears, and Eleanor ran over to her brother in complete panic.

“Ben?!” she shrieked, her face a mess of tears. “Ben, oh my _God!_ Oh my _God!”_

Madam Hooch crouched next to him, her hand lightly slapping at his cheek to get the Ravenclaw boy to rouse from his disoriented state. “C’mon, lad, breathe! You can do it, take a deep breath!”

Ben let out a pained groan, and Madam Hooch looked up at the crowd of First Years. “Angelina!” she exclaimed. “Get Madam Pomfrey, now!”

The Gryffindor girl swallowed and nodded her head, and she took off towards the castle in a haste.

George felt a hand on his shoulder, and he turned around despite his racing thoughts. Fred looked at his twin, looking stricken and utterly shocked. “Georgie,” he said quietly. “What happened?!”

“I… I… I didn’t…” George could barely speak, his eyes still trained on the boy laying in the snow, rasping for breath.

* * *

For eleven years, Fred and George had gotten by with “didn’t mean to” ‘s.

Like most excuses, every poor explanation and clamor for innocence creeped closer and closer towards an expiration date. It was inevitable that as they got older, the pair of mischievous, matching grins and rosy cheeks would one day no longer be received as a remnant of their boyish playfulness and instead, they’d be seen as an expression of immaturity and irresponsibility.

George, for all of his smarts (which were debatable, depending on which member of the Weasley family one spoke to), could not account for the fact that the day would arrive so soon.

And maybe more importantly, he didn’t account for the fact that he had seriously injured Benjamin Vance, and it was totally and undoubtedly all his fault.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy New Year, everybody! I really hope to see some comments with this chapter- I did tag this story as slow-build, but I'm really happy that you guys are finally seeing some momentum happen between these characters. What are we thinking? What do you think will happen from here? Please leave me some fun things to read!


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